Poem : The space - of a letter

I wrote this for a friend who is hurting. It isn't going to help anyone but myself.


The space – of a letter

               The space – of a letter – the –
void within the Q –

               A soft rain – holds itself
rocks itself – this is the thunder – popping the floorboards – rain
trying not to feel – desperate in its lack of color –

Think about letters without voids – ones
          zeroes – the whitespace –
          around an I –

          Someone laughed – it was fireworks –
in your peripheral vision – it was a sudden peel of a Band-Aid –

That you couldn't stand – let alone think of white space –
               well –

               There is an answer to the question –
that answer must unfill – it must –

Poem-A-Day #362 : Hearts Have A Way

Hearts Have A Way

I beat forever my heart don't want to
what of this house in my throat

The sun beam broken on sea shine is the summer of things

Cephalopod dreams and champagne wishes
are sponges to the blood stains from the crime scene

Dune this but forget how to dune that

On the lighthouse downs the horses come rabbit
they antler and speak of the black mass with raspberries

At 3 o-clock exactly there will be apocalypse loons

I forever my beat don't want to heart
but hearts have a way they spleen themselves through

Poem-A-Day #353 : Trigger

Trigger

from the Dutch trekken "to pull"
the rope is attached to your spine - your spine
fleshless taken exposed lost tail that it is
you are a dog on a chain you are
a dog sniffing the crotches
of every man in the place
from Latin catena it was always just a link
to be held closed soldered
silver shadowing the fence hides a monster - you
are the monster
here a needle thread floss make a wish
a bullet of yarn a trigger of hemp
beads of silk and bone the teeth of every dead soul
that burned across this earth

Poem-A-Day #332 : [I don't write political poetry - but]

[I don't write political poetry - but]

I don't write political poetry - but
breathing is political

Take it through the mouth - in - to - you
as a cave
draw rope - and tie it to the nearest tree that bends to the east
that wakes with dawn and serves only the sun

It will lower inside you - a bee
in the throat of a lily

Oddly gentle - it will come - with caveats

Words don't become politics - unless
they are traded outside these walls

The caught ball of air in your throat - will
not carbon dioxide - unless
you keep breathing

Poem-A-Day #328 : The Gay Looks Like Snow

The Gay Looks Like Snow

I set my gay on the table, it spills
napkins only spread it around

A gay comes on that reminds me of the 90s

Working on my gay becomes a problem
when the wifi goes out

All the heads look up, turn to the counter
watch as they gay the router

Outside, on the phone, I hear reports
on the gay of my grandfather

He was gay then out of the hospital
grumpy but well

The gay looks like snow

Poem-A-Day #318 : It Is What The Brain Does In Response That Causes Concern

It Is What The Brain Does In Response That Causes Concern

In the stark light of January it is hard to predict where it will come from
the broken man missing all of his teeth or the men in their "nice" clothes
coming out of the diner

Conversation in the parking lot our gayness on display by virtue of existence
the voices may come harsh and faggoting or they will whisper followed
by laughter and stares and cackling as doors to cars open and shut

And in that moment everyone who is a target will be hushed and silenced
and kept from being as loud and real as those people who get to drive
out of the accident that just occurred

A cell phone may go off the ringtone a Tina Turner song and someone will
have to decide to answer it the cars will move silently by the small pressed
selves and eyes will lock

On the phone a parent or friend or sibling and they will be asking what's up
the moment will elongate time stopping a hung phrase looping itself to death
there could be a fire in that rubbing second

"Fine" will be the answer because there is nothing finer than coming through
the micro without a fat lip or a worse screeching of tires or blood on the snow
there is only fine here

Poem-A-Day #294 : English

English

Let's again discuss language

It is unable to explain the noise of cars on the road
the color of breath in cold

Language does not know how to talk about feelings

It muddles across the page the best it can

A sort of clawing thing a hand
reaching never quite reaching

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 #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 #280 : Dilly Boy

Dilly Boy

Bitch you're meese

Nanti pots in the oven
shite ecaf but bona drag bona ends full basket

Bitch you so ?

Zhoosh yourself
hang the cards

Switch the ring on your fambles you look married

I'll let you doss me get down on my lallies
show the dish and all that in the cottage

Have you the measures to trade ?

Poem-A-Day #256 : Migraine

Migraine

                    My head is a burning sigil -

                                        Cloth in a bottle -

     Words form and then spread across the page until they are a smear -

                             Listen to the broken vials of pain meds -

                                                   Light will shatter -

                    Pop all the vessels in the universe -

                                       Cover and run from this -

Poem-A-Day #251 : A Series of Quakes

A Series of Quakes

The arboreal script pulls across the trunk of the tree

glacial - a sigh in the hills of Scotland - one lone rock in a rut

Out in the ocean - a puffin gives egg to rock

Weight is heat - press and brush fire - the movement of warming

a finger lick up the lip of canyon

Scotland is experiencing a cold snap - a few thousand years

The loneliest rock will dance - glacial kph is one per year -

human expansion clocks the same

We seek the bloodstones in the hazelnuts - burn them to paste

Poem-A-Day #248 : Mute

Mute

Angela Davis is talking about Palestine - again - still - forever
she is the dynamo at the end of the universe
spinning wildly free of man - and she is talking about Palestine

That word - Palestine - it renders us incapable
it drops into the already formed puddle and only renders itself mute
part of the unknowable whole - but we clap and nod in agreement with it

It is Tibet - Putin - hunger in Africa - it is the inescapable
destruction of cancer - it mutates with the passage of time
it is hard not to hear all human voices as records helplessly in groove

History is nothing if not unclean - at best
perhaps the broken turntable is a metaphor - the stupid cycle is stupid
the needle dull - the speakers are geese demanding your sandwich

The water in the pool of Palestine is unclear - still - reflections numerous
there are endless ampersands - their barbs catch in the back of the throat
they render everything as ellipses

Poem-A-Day #223 : Bibelot

Bibelot

Beside the bed is the book the pages covered in woodcuts covered in twisted faces they are mouthing words in the sleeping ears around them they are silent but their silence is also hugely exploding they are forming themselves into solid objects these objects are letters that form and unform words the letters sing in a voice that cracks the sky the sky cracks and cracks and the bowl of it cannot hold enough cherries cannot hold enough cannot not the sound of voices the sound of wings the sound of a child listening...

Poem-A-Day #216 : On Naming

On Naming

To call it by name
know that it has one - allow it to
hear you call it - it has itness

To pick up the word - place it
in your mouth - a caramel
to melt into you

Is to allow entry into your psyche

To call it by name
is to say that it deserves one - it
is an act of contrition

Observance and
- respect

To ignore the name - to un
a thing - is erasing and denying
and inviting it to assert

Poem-A-Day #191 : The In-Itself

Have I mentioned that I'm reading a lot of Existential writings lately?


The In-Itself

The paper that once was a tree and before that a seed and before that another tree has been printed on with a language that becomes indistinguishable from air the more it is looked at

The words slide into lines and the lines match the lines that are signs of life in the wood that is now a table that the paper and words sit themselves upon

Signs of a life passed, the lines, they are signs of years and time that occurred that cannot occur again and they echo that sign and beep like Morse Code with the thinking of that time

Time is a construct and that construct has experienced the tree and the pre-tree and the words flowing backwards into ink and the ink seeping into the lines like the dead sap of life

The table is on a floor that has probably been stood upon before this table placed its legs here or before the words spilled over the edge of the table and stained the floor black

Black is not a color it is the absence of color of light it is refraction negated and the eye tricked into seeing nothing

The eye is also tricking it doesn't actually see it only reflects and that reflection is tainted by the bent of its lenses and the brain attached to those lenses

Lenses smooth and polis into an arc of seeing they break up the world into upside-down universes and then into right-side up ones they are the roots of the tree reaching into the sky

The sky isn't here there is a room around it and the table in its deadness is unable to breathe but the lungs the lines the ink itself is still thinking about it endlessly thinking about it

The thinking makes it real the pulsing ink makes it possible the floor makes it a pool to sink in to the paper itself tells the story of it and the words the language manages somehow to exist

Poem-A-Day #115 : Poem for Thursday

Poem for Thursday

Can we all just agree that Thor is boring ?

Here - on the life-blood of fated men - paint your doors in crimson gore
the sun will beam black and everything will fallow treacherously

Or something like that - the end of gods - the twilight of myth
the sun setting over the hill on every damn thing created

Whether we want it to or not

Thursday is the turn day - the hinge - it is the day things will be decided
you will have to strike the hammer or not - what is being fashioned ?

Do you still seek to know ?

A wedder is a gambler

          A wether is a castrated goat

                    A bellwether is the sheep who leads the flock

Weather is what is happening right this moment

The serpent who circles itself around the equator and holds its own tail in its mouth is feeling tired - hungry for another kind of flesh - it is going to let go

And what ?

Thor in Hymir's boat battling the Midgard Serpent (1788) by Henry Fuseli

Poem-A-Day #82 : There Is

There Is

The rapid transit of us into us
there is a word for it :

The trees are :

They point their tiny fists of spring
they have opened their fingers have gone yellow
then turn toward chlorophyll :

If it goes quick then let that go
the word is is :

Pose the mannequin like it is a painter
staring into a mirror
painting a self-portrait :

Trumpets blare and they are only car horns :

The public transport of us engages the turn lane
there is a word that is is and is not :

We are searching for prose like Gershwin
that conveys a man carrying packages on a busy Thursday
on a Manhattan street :

Dropping seeds like ribbons :

Windsocks popping brass :

Is not the word also rapid in its sphere :

Poem-A-Day #74 : Accountability

Accountability

I want to hold lines on paper accountable for the things they seem to be saying

Become an accountant

I have a small pencil sharpened and ready

Let's pretend that these lines can speak that they have something to say what is it that is spoken

That word account comes from old French though exploring those roots reveals nothing the word was conter and then aconter and it means to count and it recedes quickly because what is the use

I want to say that I hold myself to account that I can explain away myself in spreadsheets and lines that become flies snapping at the heels

I pick up the blue pencil my illustrator friend left behind after his visit and I draw across the walls until the space is the color of a Smurf's flesh then I take pics for my Instagram and none of it shows up

There is the sound of a fire alarm somewhere in the building

I continue watching Parts Unknown and realize that I shall burn

That the blue pencil doctrine exists bad parts of law shall be thrown away and the good kept

Let's pretend for a second that I am not lazy that I manage motivation that I 'get things done' am one of those people who others say good things about

Let's pretend that I'm not naked while I write this and eating pizza and soda and cookies

There should be a law probably is

I think about the laws against those who cannot pay their bills about the laws against homosexuality and the forced castrations and then the forces sterilizations of the poor not white women

And I don't know what part of me to tick

Which box do I fill in when it comes time to either literally or proverbially take my life into accounts and face the great white lights of The End

I do not even believe in a god to be the keeper of that great bound book of things I did not do well so -

I think about counting myself and trying to take stock of my goods

And then I remember to hold language accountable as well call it out on its shit tell it to go fuck itself

Here language is a small token a parsing of my body it is dough and pale and full of nonsense that rarely escapes itself let alone heals anyone and yet...      and yet...

Poem-A-Day #37 : Doesn't tho' look poetic?

Doesn't tho' look poetic?

Burned skin - not blackened - not chicken on a grill
          just red - blistered even - but red

It smells like a hairdryer left on until overheating

Cocoa butter - sand - the blankness of sky

          Words look poetic - letters aligned up down circular -
logic breaks before a podium and a room hanging on the ledge
of heard and not heard -

           language falls to its doom -

This is a sandcastle - not actually made of sand or castle
          but of the memories of the land

That is once held those things within it

It is the hangover of dinosaurs roaming the earth

Once this space had to deal with all of that weight - it's
sinister but true -

          The smell of that burning - of that oil in that car