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 #301 : Cheapen

I was looking at old posts and came across THIS one from 2009. In it I talk about the unexplainable sadness that I get at poetry readings. Then I wrote a poem about Abraham Lincoln and how we are all reduced to the images we leave behind and eventually not even that.

I think I can explain my issue with readings better in 2016.

They render the work dead. A thing to recite. They are dull and boring and not much fun. They are staid and quiet and people nod their heads as readers render language into stupefying meaninglessness. They ivory tower. And most damning, they are not interesting.

Before you think I'm advocating for slams...I am not. They are hooting and hollering for buzzwords. They are waiting for the speaker to say a thing in that voice that indicates sass and skepticism. They are equally dead and equally ivory tower.

I think the reading as a form of delivery system for written things is not really worth much outside of a self-aggrandizing need for claps and book sales. That said. They are a thing that is done. Because how else do the words get into the faces? People don't read journals really. And few buy books unless they know the author or happen to find something randomly that they are into.

It's an issue. My solution is to do readings in non-traditional ways. At bars. Online. I don't think it fixes any of the issues with readings. But it means I don't have to go to a book store and stand at a mic and stare into nodding faces going 'mmm' at obnoxious points in the evening.


Cheapen

We break ourselves for what -

          There is a sense that we are ships docked together
     but what exactly are we afraid of

The drift into horizon -
A sound that is the collapse of self -

          We are paper rotting in the hold of night
     the only thing to be done is to take that and be it

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 #101 : Diving

Diving

Sugar the gravity well

          the clouds will peach - will fuse into a sea creature

Poem-A-Day #7 : Tangle

Tangle

Everything smells like vanilla in the morning

          waters came then waters went and they took things with them

The purple eclipse slid through the stop sign

          driverless there were flashes of light from within like selfies being taken

Sargasso, the weed of deceit

          steam in pipes is leftover atom maneuvers

Map Supplemental Appendix 1

I try not to get too political on this blog. I leave that to my Twitters and Facebooks. But Mitt Romney has not seen a map of Iran. Clearly.

via National Review

This is why maps are important. In one glance Romney could have come up with a better statement. Iran controls many seaports, thus is important to U.S. interests in the area. Syria has nothing to do with that. Not in this way.

MAPS!

Coral

Coral 2/10

Hands
color of clay pots
bloated fingers
break their casings

Callus

The cool water
is clear
opens fresh wounds
brightens the old.

Cavort

Cavort 4/16

Every night I stare out at ocean and flap my arms into the wind.

I've been told hurricane wind can be leaned against.

Salt creeps in my pores I smell like rust until morning.

Hair damps dreds into kelp horseshoe crabs tangle in eyelashes
the sunrise glazes leathered skin with wrinkles.

My puckered fingertips are prunes.

The corners of my eye barnacle and freeze.

I become figurehead a gull flayed.