Poem : Cockshut

Civil Twilight in Manhattan

Twilight is my favorite time of the day.

It is so cleanly between two things. So present in its liminal nature. It feels like water starting to tide. This is probably why it has a history of being "magical" or "important".

In Hinduism it is advised not to eat in this time period as the Asuras are most active at this time in their battle with the Devas. To gain power from mutability seems incredibly useful.

There are three kinds of twilight: Civil, Nautical, and Astronomical. Civil twilight is the period after sunset when things are still fully distinguishable by the naked eye, it is also called the blue hour. Nautical twilight is the period after Civil twilight when sailors can still distinguish a horizon to take measurements for position at sea. Astronomical twilight is the last phase, it is when astronomical readings can begin. When the faintest stars begin to show through the skyglow.

Cockshut is a very old English word for twilight. It literally means - the time chickens go to sleep, when they shut up.

---

Cockshut

Everything is the color of things going to sleep

and that one vein in your arm that pulses under the pillow.


In the whitespace between rooms              a filament
                                                     a gap

passes unnoticed — one single silk thread of breath.


Opposite of a rooster call — a moisture

                             sliding down a single finger of grass.


The walls grow pine needles — cooling              cooling
                                                             cooling

gently —              now —              not              so gently.

Poem-A-Day #346 : I Look Terrible In Photos

Now is a good time to mention that I am about to hit the one year mark of this version of Poem-A-Day. I've been debating what I want from this thing and have found myself deciding to alter how these work.

So...the project will continue, but I'm going offline.

I will still post 2-3 poems a week on here, but the majority of the poems will live in a physical, handwritten form. This is to free up the project from the constraints of blogger and to give me a bit of breathing room to explore posting more essay-type things on this blog.

I may start posting more of them to Instagram or Twitter as a result. We will see.


I Look Terrible In Photos

In every photo of myself I am a tree ,  arms reaching out their wires attempting to dig a wall ,  being a tree in photographs results in a body that is constantly a seedling ,  it never fruits ,  always in flower ,  I remember the smallness of the earth and the press of roots but there is little calling from the sun ,  it is an orb in the sky that will not quit smiling ,  a cruel thing that ,  the camera an eye unblinking (  an image no one has thought of before  ) ,  a shield pitted with arrows ,  here are the results of the capturing ,  the soul is iced and held and in constant summer clothing ,  eyes will never catch the glint of the stars because the stars are forever behind the blueness of daylight ,  the sun has won here and the wooden feeling in the body has as well ,  in every damn photo I stand there with a hunch and the arms of a dead man ,  it laughs in its suit and tie ,  the blue of blood pops in the black and white of the moment ,  here everyone ,  an offering .

Poem-A-Day #317 : Insomnia

Insomnia

Peace over night - quiet          obvious

But some days the night refuses to rest

It howls - not well - dying cackles

Poem-A-Day #290 : Nightscape

Nightscape

On your skin

A color like purple

It thighs and glides across surfaces

A woman is thrown into the pool of a taxi

There is night and then there is city

Each thing defines itself against the void of space

Your eyes are glares

The streetlight blinks yellow banishing color

Mono

A wish to be the reflection in your sweat

The smell of garbage

A rat across your foot

Uber and crash

Your teeth are violet

Poem-A-Day #272 : On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

On the First Hold the Collar Close to Your Neck Night

The sound of train tracks cooling is a baking sheet in the oven clang

These are house noises - the world
is a house making noises - the cooling
is the world making house

The pie was delicious
                         at least everyone said so
               why is it so hard to believe those sorts of statements
          conditioning - because - praise is ego and ego is inflatable

And no one can float on it alone

The oven cools it has a stone in its belly and the stone is blackened

On the first hold the collar close to your neck night the world sighed deeply and said that the years are getting harder to come back from

It closed up itself
curtains and all the doors
were resealed this autumn the windows leak still but...

Picture a train track popping - the back
of it breaking and curling upwards into the dark sky

It shatters into ravens and they
shatter into a rain of snow hard as glass
glinting like fresh asphalt

Jacobin Pigeon

Poem-A-Day #264 : Unrest

Unrest

Wake and the arm is cold again - outside the blankets
like it wants to escape the comfort

The arm wants to tell you something - you were sleeping and it has a message for you

There are marks along the skin - birth and otherwise
notice how uneven the color and the veins are so visible in the darkness

The sound of celery breaking

Knees collapsing on pavement and the glitter of light on everything

The arm wants you to remember fear and agency

The arm wants to sweat with you
there is the sound of a siren - it is the sound of all sirens - the room fills then empties of it

A moment before the most beautiful dream ever forgot - it lingers pinkly in the haze of the brain - calls in sing-song that it should be returned to

This arm has thoughts of going through the window - it cannot understand how one sleeps in troubled times like these - there should be blood on the steps of the capitol

Blood is hard to clean

If it is forced under the covers to warmth - the arm will form itself into a mouth and begin to whisper all the promises that have been broken

If it stays in the cold it will purple - possibly loose itself and never come back

Poem-A-Day #254 : First Frost

First Frost

There is the moment when the night comes up to us and grabs our hands

It is not a threat but it feels like blood in the water - the tendons are always just about to kick - the fists are always clenching and unclenching there is a grinding sound under the skin - it is velvet but burned it smells like canned air - we are on fire together

Getting out of the car tonight may feel like a death - air escaping like prisoners fleeing labyrinthine hallways into the cold of everything

But

Above will be found the stars where they were left still silver in the blue expanse of space - Orion notching an arrow at the backs of the Pleides

The roof of the car beside mine was covered in frost - thin and translucent - I was urged by an unknown force to rake my finger across the surface - and I did

Fingers come away cold and wet and covered in light - the ink of winter seeping into the bones of autumn - around us the cars all twinkle it is a calm

There is a moment when night comes up and puts its hands to our throats

Not a threatening gesture - an honest one

The rasps of its nails speaking about the darkness within us - the heat of its eyes a cipher - night is a void filling with the answers to questions asked in daylight

At the top of the cycle there is death - at the bottom there is more

Somewhere in between is a sort of daylight - a moment where hope exists - where the growing isn't futile and it will not just end again

Fuck - it burns -

Poem-A-Day #228 : Night

Night

all in your head : the twisting blackness is

wood caves in itself : fire is hollowing

the children's faces darken : coal smoke ash everywhere

Poem-A-Day #224 : Path

Path

Paths don't know where they go
          they lay themselves down over and over and they end up
     where they do

They take us in the night          they are kidnappers and thieves

          One can find themselves in the garden of judgement
when they thought they were out for a stroll in the country
          the gates of hell
                    fling themselves open at the merest whisper

The rotting corpse of a child will throw a ball to a rotting dog
both          will smile up into the face of their guest
and will take their hand and never let go -


And the path that led there will not even notice what it has done
                                                  it will just keep sending travelers
                                                  into the grinder

Poem-A-Day #186 : Nostalgia

Nostalgia

In the dark fields of summer - the heat escapes us
it crawls into the sky in tendrils of smoke - it creeps

Our heat is a suck - the roads hoard it like money

This isn't some theft - the universe gives no fucks

The day collapses - it shatters - it is our job
to find the pieces and to stick them together with gold

To hold this moment in our minds - perfect it

The pressure of our remembering will diamond it
until it is something that cannot ever have existed

An inner-earth ocean full of monsters

The darkness will not stay dark here - it will recede
it will become the light on the surface of a lake - your eye

It will also degenerate with time - it will never be a photograph
like the heat held in pavement - the night will leech it off

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 #147 : Study on Rain #2

This is the beginning of the other part of Study on Rain #2 I posted.


Study on Rain #2 (7/17/04)

There,
across the street
huddled around
a half-dressed man
who is crying,
are other half-dressed people

Through sobs,
What will I do
now that I've
killed...

And is he talking
literal moments of time
actions with reaction
or
can there be metaphor at
10:00 in the night
with two young girls
in their underwear
standing over him,
consoling him

Later in the street
she was clothed then
standing,
we took the girl home
at 3AM in our car she said,
There are some times
you're just tired
you know?

What to think
of a reverse pieta

And then the mother
the next morning
was there asking,
You took her where?
I didn't know my
son had friends over
tonight...

Poem-A-Day #123 : Night

For the month of July I am hitching my Poem-A-Day wagon to Ariana Lombardi's amazing Salon project wagon to do some amazing wagon things!

I dug out my journals from when I was in high school and will be re-working the poems into ... something. I'm calling this project 'Remember'.

I will post both the original and the new edit. Original first!


Untitiled (May 27 1998)

The puddles shimmer with the skins of soil. The floating edges of night. The skins of crab-starred beings light the endless night. The fireflies fall gently like fireworks sparks. Can I see the night life of the unopened door. Crack the lock.


The edit!


Night

The lock of night - the closing in of our vision - we are helpless in the dark but stumble forth to bury ourselves in wet soil -

Out here in that darkness - beyond ourselves - the skin of the earth cracks open and the boundaries between this and that soften - it rains -

After the storm the puddles begin to settle - stars reflected look like crabs tracing their way to the ocean - the sparks of distant fireworks become lightening bugs they dance -

Poem-A-Day #51 : The Broken Column of Light

The Broken Column of Light

The broken column of light across the bed

          across your face the look of warning

                    that this is the moment when –

I take off my clothes

I trace the perimeter of the lake

I walk into the water until it reaches my knees

At the end of everything – I don’t even

know when that is but it is

                    Here is the water lapping sunset

          the tide swallows the stones we placed

when we picked up the bones of trees and mice

Poem-A-Day #15 : Your Arm Is A Glass Bottle

Your Arm Is A Glass Bottle

Curl your twigs around this waist
and poke at the center of the base

Roll marble fingers on the sand
this sound is paper fires and strapped heels

Along the jellyfish streetlights
the concrete bulges like makeup

Here stone man tae the knife fingers
that I have in my pocket and trace them
along your wrists until they peel

The night is dumb with heat
your arm is so fragile that it melts at the elbow

Clouds shatter endlessly on themselves
as the moon triangles

Source : Little Dog Vintage

Luminary

I have a deep fascination with fireflies. The little glowing dance they do. The way they seem to rise out of nowhere at sunset and then vanish all day.


Luminary 8/22

Firefly blinks are too much like cats eyes they are
too much the rising falling summer cool evening pulling
from the blades of green soft grasses

Feet catch on the sharps of rocks on the
breaking wave of August rising up over the fields mopping
up every dark space in the harsh humidity

With all these faces in the dark unblinking with all
these tongues licking at the trees that begin to motion
a beginning that motions a dance

Feet are a waltz of toes in dirt flowers dropping petals they are
so similar to everything and the weather is so close
the stars open up and the lights are off the curtains are vines