Poem-A-Day #287 : Some Days

Some Days

Clouds are striating
they form a road into the distance - telescoping
there is a forgotten city beyond the horizon
where everything is perfect

Some days I just don't know

The letters lay themselves across the tracks
they tie themselves down
and they wait for the train to come

This isn't about poetry - that is tired
this is about the break along the horizon
that birds peel themselves out of - a cartwheel of fire
contained in the barrel of the sky

Let's plant things there
see if the line melts if perspective will allow
the flowers to look like skyscrapers

Words cannot stand today

Or any day really

Language tries to reach - to unfathom
it calls to us from a distance unmanageable

The lines of clouds race themselves
like soap down a drain

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

Inspiration : Paling

Paling 10/2/09

This is a poem about the fall. About the loneliness of the city. The sudden confrontation with nature that a cold, wet leaf on the floor brings in the middle of the night.

1.
Again trees

2.
Rounded hills
covered
A yellow blanket, its
shock
colors cause the eyes to
dart

3.
Body remembers waking

3am naked toe touches

First fall leaf, first rain

The fall is my favorite season. It crops up again and again in my writing. Call it a love of the death/rebirth cycle. A fascination with entropy. Whatever you like.

4.
yellow
drops
the sky is busy being orange

everything is mulled wine
spices over butternut squash

mostly
everything looks ending
a deepish bruise

The other night J and I hosted a wonderful holiday party. We made this recipe for Wassail. It has apple cider and cranberry juice. And a bunch of spices. You then add a bunch of bourbon.

It was a delicious deep purple. Like liquid plums.

5
All of this is cliched
Cycles, colors, seasons.
Death, death, death...

But -

When leaves start their jumping,
like baby birds from the nest,
it is hard not to think about
a slow darkening.

The way soil turns
smooth, black.

That damp smell,
subtle chocolate,
parts around leaf veins.

6.
You pull up the blankets.

You pray for smoothness.

Picture the way earth looks after worms have had their way with it.

New.

Fresh.

Blank.

Inspiration : Exoenzyme

Exoenzyme 10/1/09

Take off your shirt let me hold it to my chest

The poem has obvious sexual overtones. The act of eating is inherently sensual. Sex involves the tongue. The body. The fact that we are moved by pheromones, that a person's smell holds the key to attraction. Our clothes, objects, homes also hold this power.

There
is a taste as I spoon you into my mouth

There is the story of the Mellified Man, a particular obsession of mine - An elder, knowing it is their time to go stops eating. They only ingest honey. It fills their insides. Eventually they even sweat a thickened golden liquid. Their blood also turns sweet. Then they die. The body is placed in a coffin filled with honey and the whole thing is buried for a generation. When it is dug up, the body has turned into a semi-solid. The entire town/village/tribe comes and partakes. The ingesting of the dead elder infuses the next generation with that person's knowledge. They are literally becoming their ancestor.

From your ___ to my ___

Beautiful - anything could be sitting
filling those blanks

Ambiguity is key to all things. Sex, history, the rites of cultures. Those blanks hold the world. But they also seem to be obviously filled.

Trappings

I have never wanted to be someone else.

Not really.

I definitely love fashion. Definitely love what make up can do to a face.

I love the armor-like qualities of it all. It's a costume. And it is a wall between you and out there.

Which is why I love drag. Good drag is all about illusion. About unreality.

Recently I've noticed an uptick in the color choices and patterns available in men's fashion. Thank you sweet baby Versace. If any part of the 80s needed to come back it was COLOR. The 90s and their plaid and grunginess bleached out a lot of the vibrancy of 80s fashion. Even in pop music. Everything got a touch darker, grayer.

This is also to say that I find inspiration in the artifice of all of this. That facade.

A local Santa Fean, Pippa Garner is a good example of someone who has taken this idea to the full endpoint. In the 90s Pippa transitioned from male to female in an attempt to invest in herself as she would a car. To 'tinker' with herself. From Trappings: Stories of Women, Power and Clothing by Tiffany Ludwig:

"It was a way of actually making a purchase of something that I can incorporate into myself, and know that it will never have to be insured or stolen or anything else."

Pippa goes on to explain her uniform; a home made t-shirt and tights. The shirt changes every day. She also says that she hopes her look raises 'curiosity'. Almost a silent confrontation. You can read the whole essay, and check out the rest of this great book on Amazon.

While I do not hope to achieve discomfort and I am definitely not going to change my sex for fashion. I see the interest in using clothing, appearance, etc. as a means to promote discussion. To make a statement.

I wish more would play with this.

Jeffree Star

Dapper Q is a great site and broader, part of a community of sites devoted to 'transgressing men's fashion'. Born out of women and queer circles wanting to move away from traditional 'feminine' clothing, the site is an amazing resource for people who want to dress in traditional male clothing but do it in a way that is moved into ambiguous. Queering it up basically. Movements like this are interesting because I don't see a male version of this outside of drag.

The closest I can see are goth and rock circles where Adam Lambert and Jeffree Star exist. These sort of neo-glam Bowies. But they are outliers. There has been a move towards some club-goers in NYC and a few other places to wear high heels. I support this wholly. They are sexy, and a heel looks good on men or women.

I want these lines to blend more though. Not that I want to wear dresses, or heels. But maybe a little more freedom of choice in it. Without a stigma. A hassle. Or a bashing.

Inspiration : Ghostly

Ghostly 9/30/09

It's fog over valley - a warm day - pressure
on my skull filling in every crack

In the original post I talked a little about my headaches. I've also talked about this here and here.

I have never gotten a diagnosis. It feels like my brain has come loose in the shell of my skull. When you turn it is like the brain takes a second to also turn.

I know it's some weather - pressure drop - a
hung-over lecture rattling

There is a need, a want, to come up with explanations for the occurrence. Maybe it was warm yesterday and colder today. And that could be it. Maybe a storm is coming in, you can see it on the horizon. Maybe the trees are particularly pollen-y today.

The reality is that I don't know. Maybe there's a tumor growing in there. Maybe my brain has come loose from the meniscus of my skull. Maybe the pressure and weather do it.

Maybe it's all in my head. HA HA.

It drills - a curtain over eyes that buzzes lightly
cicadas with glassine features

It isn't really like cicadas. I mean, it is a constant feeling. But it isn't sound. That I equate it with the noise made by them is synesthesia at work.

The headaches I get are more like someone holding their hands tightly, but not painfully, around your neck. They may apply a little pressure, but it isn't serious. Over time it grows in apprehension and annoyance until it feels like they are trying to kill you.

It's like that game kids play. "I'm not touching you"

Only inside my head.

they break at the first sign of breathing -

When a headache ends. There is a weird feeling of lightness. People call them 'auras'. Some feel a headache coming on. Like a strange premonition. I don't usually. I can sometimes feel the tightening inside and grab some ibuprofen in time. But usually it is there before I know it.

I get echos. I can feel where the headache was for hours, sometimes days, afterwards. Like a bruise. Like there is permanent damage in there.

Then that too vanishes. And I sort of magically forget this is a thing that happens to me until the next time.

Inspiration : Cheapen

Cheapen 9/29/09

Pennies tarnish - turn green the
milky waters of the bay

I have always loved the look of old things. The dark spots that form on silver. The way wood softens around the edges then the grain separates before finally crumbling.

Copper tarnish is beautiful, green-blue, it looks like stain painted onto the surface.

Creepy.

There are barnacles that look like Lincoln
on hulls of schooners

The idea that a barnacle could have the face of Lincoln is ridiculous. It is also amazing. This is the idea of finding Jesus on toast. Satan in the smoke of the World Trade Center.

It is finding the shapes of things in clouds.

But I mean it. I mean that somehow a penny was dropped into a spawning of these little creatures and they took the shape of the Emancipator himself.

Look at barnacles. They are halfway to having faces. They are eyes without heads. Or mouths, they are venus flytraps. They are Audrey II's.

Ford Theatre curtain fragment.

His nose smells all seven seas and in
Times Square they have a bit of curtain

The smell of the ocean is particularly strong on the east coast. It is different then the Pacific. It smells like brine. Like fish. It smells darker, somehow colder.

From the Ford theater - history
under glass - untouchable

This is true. The fragment of curtain was on display in 2009.

Eventually all faces are left to pictures only
just masks

Old photographs are amazing. The faces staring up at you through time. Their eyes still holding whatever thoughts they were having as the shutter snapped shut.

In most antique stores you can find bins of discarded photos, postcards with cursive writing on them. All for sale for under a dollar. Memories for less than food.

Of paper
there is a thickness to blood lacking in paper

Blood is very hard to clean. It has a strange thickness to it. It smears rather than absorbs.

That copper taste and the red that seals brown
that softens in water

Inspiration : Black

Black 9/28/09

My heart is a breathing organ with an unblinking eye

Art by JimmyBlaze

The hamsa is a hand-shaped motif that originates in the middle east. The exact origins are unknown, but pre-date Islam and Christianity. In Islam it is known as the Hand of Fatima, after Muhammad's daughter.

It is meant to protect against the evil eye.

The idea that a look could bring harm.

It has become popular in Israel and appears on jewelry and keepsakes. It is considered a good luck charm. I have one next to my front door. I am not Jewish, Muslim, or superstitious. It was a gift from a good friend. It traveled from Israel with her in 2008.

My hamsa

On my back I have a large tattoo of the sun with an eye in the center. You could view it in a similar light as the hamsa. I always thought of it as an eye in the back of my head. A look out.

When I was 21 I was deeply romantic. The thought that some ink lines buried in a few layers of skin could protect me form history. From the future...

My heart is a hearing organ - a kneecap breaking on a tire iron

That is the sound a healthy heart makes.

The University of Washington has a handy guide with audio of various heart problems. The most common being a murmur. Murmurs result from an out of the ordinary blood flow. They create what sounds like an echo of the heart beat, or a woosh sound.

Most cannot be heard without the aide of a stethoscope. Laying your head onto someones chest as they sleep will not help you find abnormal heart sounds. It will allow you to feel their warmth and count the rhythms of their breaths.

a chamber burned - the outline of a body left behind

It is hard to imagine. Those white marks on the pavement. They could be tricks of the light. Could be strange light shadows. An artifact of a camera causing the color to be odd.

They are nuclear shadows.

Permanent marks on the ground showing where radiation from the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima went and how.

This bridge is 900 meters from the epicenter of the explosion. Thermal radiation moves in completely straight lines. So when it meets an object it reflects off of it. You get a perfect shadow. A mirror of the world.

There are famous shadows. An outline of a body sitting on the steps of a bank. These pilings on the bridge. This valve. The everyday object becomes a strange sort of witness. A sentinel that calls up the past without rest.

Constant. Beating. Watching.

Inspiration : Unworthy

Unworthy 9/27/09

The human body can go bad in so many ways.

One day you are sitting, eating a muffin, drinking a latte. The next you have cancer, a blood disease, an aneurysm.

There are some truly horrifying illnesses that can just happen.

And that I am afraid of.

I fear I have genetic disorders
A bad heart, ASL, cancer, gum disease
My head is going to decide that sanity isn't for it

The image above is of Blascho's Lines. They are invisible lines that cover your body. Mine. They become suddenly visible with various skin disorders. The lines are believed to trace the migration of embryonic cells during in utero development. They do not correspond to nervous, muscular, or lymphatic systems. The lines can be observed in other animals such as cats and dogs.

The stripes are a type of genetic mosaicism. Which is when different cells with different genotypes appear in one individual.

Your body is a mosaic.

This is a portrait mosaic from Pompeii. A woman with a pen to her lips, book in hand. She is contemplating 50 Shades of Gray. Or something. Point is, she's made up of little tiles. That mimic atoms. And she had invisible lines of embryonic cells all over her.

And maybe they showed up sometime.

When they do. They look like this.

And that kind of looks like a kick-ass leopard make-up job. Though more calico cat.

I fear the divide between reality and dreaming
It blurs sometimes
It's an ocean liner - I'm a bit of wood

I recently had a strange fight with a skin disorder. I thought it was ring worm. And I even talked about it in a post.

It turned out that the rash was actually Pityrias Rosea. Which has no known cause and is treated by 'waiting'. It showed up in lines across my chest and back. In a pattern that looked like stripes. In lines.

What is amazing about the ways the body goes wrong. Is that sometimes it does and we suddenly can see how it began. We hold the memory of our creation in lines across our skin. They are hidden. They are forgotten.

I fear tomorrow will be the same as today and so on
That the sun will rise and the sky will be blue
I fear not being afraid

We are recordings of ourselves.


Inspiration is a try at exploring my own work in a thoughtful way. A book report on me.

Inspiration : Tout

Tout 9/26/12

You are dressed in your fall camouflage
are wood ducking the season

Yes. Yes you are.

While it is easy to see the basic idea behind this poem. The true inspiration came from my cat.

This is my cat:

Awwwww...

He likes to sit high up on bookshelves and stalk me. Sometimes he hides in boxes or drawers and jumps at me as I walk by.

He's a cat.

So I mashed hunting and my cat together with a creepy stalker vibe and some vague doppelgänger-ness.

high-hatting matching my gait

Also...doppelgängers are super creepy. Like really. Abraham Lincoln claimed to have a vision of one that Mary Todd Lincoln interpreted as him winning a second term but dying before the end of it. Other famous people reporting the phenomena:

      Percy Bysshe Shelly - Percy and his wife Mary Shelly supposedly met his double.

      John Donne - Saw his wife's double the night she miscarried.

      Johann Wolfgang Goethe - Saw himself riding horseback.

      George Tryon - His double walked through a party shortly after his ship sank in the Meditteranean.

Inspiration is a try at exploring my own work in a thoughtful way. A book report on me.

Inspiration : Beldam

Thalestris, Queen of the Amazons visits Alexander.

Beldam 9/25/09

This was the first poem-a-day poem. As with all the poems, the word came first.

'Beldam' is an old-English word for witch or hag. It is implied the woman in question is ugly.

At the time my family was facing a lot of death. My aunt had recently died from breast cancer. My father's mother had died suddenly from cancer and my mother's mother was diagnosed with lymphoma. She would die fairly soon after.

With all that around me I was thinking about what makes an ugly woman. I thought of the Amazons and their practice of removing the left breast for archery purposes. In our society women who are left breast-less are viewed as weak, less than. My aunt had a double mastectomy. To rebuild her breasts they did a procedure where they use a flap of skin from the stomach and stretch it up and then use the muscle to build. She was left nipple-less and belly button-less.

Each amazonian breast
placed in a vat of honey
soaks until golden

I wanted the image to be empowering. Enshrining that lost part of the body in gold.

Artists interpretation of 'Mellified Man'

Honey is naturally antiseptic and antibacterial. In Burma there are priests that bury their chief abbots in coffins of honey. There is the myth of the Mellified Man. An older member of the community agrees to the process. They abandon all food and water for only consuming honey. After awhile this diet would prove fatal. The body is then suspended in a coffin of honey for up to 100 years then the 'mellified' body is taken and sold as a confection to ward against ailment.

is spooned like cow tongues
onto a waiting child's mouth

That confection is both sweet and terrible. Our own genes cause us to self-destruct. We remove the bad parts, but what happens to them? We still pass on those genes to the next generation. The idea that what we take into us becomes a part of us is as old as man.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and he that loves it will eat from its fruit. (Proverbs 18:21)

Endocannibalism is the eating of a member of the tribe. There are many reasons that people did this. Most are based around the idea that the dead person's soul will enter the living who consume the body. There is a belief that the experiences and power of the dead will be absorbed by the living.

The consumption of the honeyed body is the ultimate metaphor of gene-passing. Of knowledge. And the good and bad that come with it. Cannibalism is linked to all sorts of diseases. A mad-cow like disease called kuru occurs in the tribes of Papua New Guinea. The disease has been traced back to one individual who was consumed at death.

we empty
into each other


Inspiration is a try at exploring my own work in a thoughtful way. A book report on me.

Kodak 1922 Test

What Else?

This is the video for 'What Else Is There?' by Royksopp. It features the voice of Karin Dreijer. Amazing song.



It was me on that road
But you couldn't see me
Too many lights out, but nowhere near here

It was me on that road
Still you couldn't see me
And then flashlights and explosions

Roads end getting nearer
We cover distance but not together

I am the storm I am the wonder
And the flashlights nightmares
And sudden explosions

I don't know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish

It's about you and the sun
A morning run
The story of my maker
What I have and what I ache for

I've got a golden ear
I cut and I spear
And what else is there

Roads and getting nearer
We cover distance still not together

If I am the storm if I am the wonder
Will I have a flashlights nightmares
And sudden explosions

There's no room where I can go and
You've got secrets too

I don't know what more to ask for
I was given just one wish