Poem : Resiliating

Risiliating basically means when something resumes its shape after being deformed. Think of pressing your hand into foam. Or those stress balls.

A week ago my grandfather died. He was 90. His funeral was yesterday.

I hate funerals. They are unnatural. You sit on little chairs or pews, too close to each other, you say a few things about the dead person. You shake a lot of hands and hung a lot of people who barely know. You move on.

The funeral home in my parent's home town has been run by the same family for 125 years. They advertise with a sign that says they are a "Victorian crematory". They have a sign with a little horse drawn hearse on it.

The inside of the funeral home is decorated in shades of emerald and amethyst. Floral wallpaper. It smells of perfume. It is an old house, the rooms are oddly shaped. There are fireplaces.

The flowers around the urn, which was actually a box, were too shiny. Like they had been polished. Peace lilies have unnaturally shiny leaves already and the one by the urn glossed like the uncanny valley.

Funerals are definitely the uncanny valley.

---

Resiliating

At the funeral

lilies were glossy reflection

Light diffusing
around the edges
of the eye of a swan

They were the shape that lilies always form

Pristine loon necks
rising lowering
from a fountain of leaves

A school of boats
lolling on a calm water

—

Rooms breathe

Burn themselves
images on a television
left on too long

—

The old television
in the old room
filled with green

Is where the old man died

Where he breathed long
like a room
his ribcage became solid
then permanent

His heart leaving a imprint
a notch in space

We all burn an echo

—

Press hand to
mushroom soft mat of soil

Leave an imprint

Funerary green
on the retina
the rod and cone of it
a bobbing sound
over a mid-morning lake

Poem-A-Day #311 : Listen you fucks -

Listen you fucks -

The plaster
falls from the ceiling -

Molds -

Spiders come for us -

There was a city
flooding with fingers -

Direworks going off -

Crumbles galore -

Someone sneered faggot
another wet themselves -

No one was holy -

A man named God
lost his car keys
while picking up a pizza -

He swung
a flashlight at the sunset -

A mantis rode a beetle
black went pink -

There was a sense
that the tape holding it together
was cheap -

A horse walked into a bar -

A sandpaper crane burned at the sky -

A ballgown in a weed dispensary sobbed -

Sound of ice cream melting
the universal 'you've got mail' -

Poem-A-Day #291 : If

If

Write beautifully
words that could sear and pop
with the light of stars

They will cause palpitations
be boxes opening into boxes
revealing one lone puzzle piece

Rend yourself
the scraps of white cloth
will be made into scarves

Language will fill sails
or at least bring to mind
the image of full sails

Fragility
everything should wreak of breakage
and the feeling of tears on fingers

These true blunt instruments
these lines could be claw-footed bathtubs
that would fill with blood and flowers

Poem-A-Day #188 : We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

I've been reading a lot of Sartre. It's ruining/rebuilding me.

We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

What to be done with a mirror that refuses reflection

It is a song that will not resolve it is the frustrating noise of refusal

A great 'no' hovering over the landscape in garish colors

We are in a country surrounded by the clicking of dolphins

And that is beautiful but disorienting to find in this landlocked space

Our faces are masks but this is too easy to say and too hard to believe

They are cages first for our eyes and the tangle of lint we call our minds

And then there are eyes let loose on the world to terrorize with their focus

The unreflection is a cataract light in your eye is just like broken silver

When we have a lack of it there is little to resolve ourselves

We are also the clicking of creatures pulled from the ocean and left to fend

Poem-A-Day #27 : Camping on The Battleground

Camping on The Battleground

          White light on
purple eyes          the night skins at you          the reeds
                    wrapped in yellow string          vent themselves
in the mouth exhaust

Lungs aren't quite like pipes          tube fibers
that          branch infinitely          snail feelers
                                                  in search of a shell

                    The conch of the ear radios for help          no one
there          probably a number for an abandoned phone booth

          It's too cold for this          the marsh is milk in this cold
the reeds are turning gray in this cold
                              The sky is a pool of absorbing in this cold

There is the echo of horse hooves          the spectral
          image of a rider          the fires of death
do not go out -

Walking to Work Kōan

Walking to Work Kōan

Segmented carapace of white orchids

          the tail of a kite -

each bloom - a bow

The morning makes the tree lime

leaves fall -

          flash bulbs - LED

breaking fireflies in hands

Those war-paint lines on your face

          mine

The man man pushes the cart of glass

stares into each can - treasure

          the sound of wind chimes

What Images I Obsess

What Images I Obsess 2/29

Fireflies blinking off and then on
as they rise from the grass in August

Red of sand against the blue
of the sky like in an O'Keefe

That blue like Rothko

The face of Vishnu with his tongue out
wheeling arms threading time's blanket

A monk ringing a bell
walking one step every toll

A drumbeat out of time


There is silence after a gunshot
flies spiral and unfold when waved away


The hands of the old splicing each other
like the limbs of old cherry trees


My grandmother's eyes

The needle in and out of seconds
that way night comes slow then fast

Black following blue lights becoming stars