two poems...

...each written a few weeks ago.


4:23 a.m., hollywood and nichols canyon

At some point late nite we broke the table in two, the weight of it
and the lines cut deep to something,
a sort of bone-dry breathlessness I’d never been before
I tell you
The raging love of life won't get me on my feet this time
I sit here good and I ain’t moving
You’re so bloody full of lies I can smell it
but I don't care, oh well, whatever--
I'll buy it all.
And if we run and run in circles, well,
I ain’t never tried it, so let me run deeper in this track...


--- --- ---


for cheney

Baby, you’re a hothouse flower,
Raging, tigerclaws and filthy grinning eyes,
a spoiled and growling kind of clawing at the space between our feet--
interstellar and vast, it is and
the poetry of your crumpled and sliding speech patterns mystifies me,
are you some sorta code
you simple little conundrum puppydogeyed sinister and darlin,
I don't trust you any farther than I can throw you, no
I dunno what to make of you but
a painting dripped and violently splattered, running
down my wrists to congeal at my toes, lovely and sublime
musical almost,--
you’ve got the
weirdest ways of saying things--
so lovely
your pretty wicked face,
and me
I'm a sucker







posted at 11:02 PM

disclaimer: I woke up the day after returning from burningman in my home, with these
words bubbling out of my brain--they did not rise from any specific bad
experience (as sometimes I've had people contact me gasping "Are you
ok?!!? Are you ok?!?" after having written things)...altho they do draw
on life experience accumulated over time, yes.

and so.

-------------------------------------------------------------


We will likely meet at a show in the dark and exchange information and
there will be a small taste of something there, like spring when it is
winter or the first ozone smell of fall when it is a choking stifling
summer—the delicate pinprick on the tip of the tongue that senses
sweetness, and flavors the small hanging moments with the idea that you
might not be alone, a newfound treasure hoped for but still always
unexpected, a way of simply feeling less bored, I suppose, when I think
about it very much-—of choosing to place a mantle of hope around one
individual for a brief space of time, settling it around their face like
an aureole, lighting their words and actions with greater meaning than
they would ever truly carry.

Clinging to one another in the dark, a hunger, an unravening of
separation, and he’s saying something loud, he is crying, he is
younger—-they always seem younger even when they are not--and I feel old
old old, and far away from anything that is meaningful or alive—-the
sudden exhaustion as my thighs, the small of my back, go hot and rushing
flushed with a brief abdication of the usual narrative in my head, then
immobile and concrete as if to ward him off or wield a separate
space—and he is triumphant, triumphant, he’s a shining golden boy there,
having fought the good fight and run the trails and brought back the
prize, the one that means nothing to me, nothing at all, alone there in
my cold little headspace, a silent and thinking monitor, reptilian below
the surface----

He will leave or I will leave and it does not matter, and if it does
somehow matter it will only draw hard on the blood for a brief time
while I mourn some absence that really only marks another thing found
wanting in me—-there have become so many and I am tired and worn out on
this endless discovery--

And I do not wish to repeat this, take your goddamned goldenhaired
towers, your cliffs and charging horses and go, go, leave me bereft of
footing on which to stand ten thousand feet above the sea so I can fly.
I need this.






posted at 12:45 AM

prayer at mono lake

alchemize my life,
make of me a creature hot and shining,
a running-fast river,
to catch up the golden glory collecting along the twisting paths here and in the rocks
come tumbling down,
a wild rush of heavy weight and crushing
sublime and terrifying,
exploding into space,
shaking every thousand-year-old tree
on the mountain that arched over us holy and violet,
the light like lions pouring spilling waves on open air,
as I lay on my back and stared at heaven so far far away….






posted at 5:16 PM

now you say
we've got hell to pay
don't worry baby that's okay
I know the boss
-the afghan whigs.



posted at 1:50 PM

~~~


letter to a girl friend

The men in my life, they are all a problem, they all say
“I love you,”

or they say

“I don’t love you,”

and either way it is a problem;

so I ask you,

my golden girl, my handsoff queen, whom I respected the moment I met,

how do you do it,
throw yourself into moments and minutes and magics the kind I could make if maybe
maybe
I could know the way the way
You seam your self off straight,
Not a cut-out from your chest but a diversion of the waterways inwards,
So that no streams shall reach your center
To pollute your happy heart?






posted at 1:42 PM

the value of zero

if nothing is
the quietly growing vacancy of space
interstellar and complete, vast
and broad, whale-wide leagues for millennia,
stars expanding,
old worlds collapsing,
oceans and seas empty and cooling,
if nothing is
at barren altitudes flung so high to the canopy of the stars that the sun would come down,
where wind claws torqued stones to spiraled perfection and makes of plants
silver spikes erected heavenwards at dawn to catch acute-angled light;
if nothing is
the peace we sink to like dry leaves
when all things desert us and we are bereft of
old loves and meanings,
and are instead gravid with lives not yet followed to logical conclusions,
narrations not yet written;
if nothing is
the inestimable value of that Mesopotamian digit,
where our primeval rivers flood over and over to
drown walled gardens, submerge valleys of shadows
and leave behind
nothing
to grow rich and wide with time again and again,
unfurling new worlds like nilotic sails,

then I have nothing to give you, love.
Nothing at all.



~~~



How’s she feeling today
Tired and sick of this place
Red wine is fast
At the lip of your glass saying I’m gonna ruin
Everything
Everything
So it’s better my sweet,
that we hover like bees
‘cause there’s no sure footing
no love I believe.
If you meet me in the night you can covet all you like
But don’t try to stop me—I cling tightly
To this life.
-neko case.



~~~



Thursday, August 7, 2003

we’ve got
time to hold us, immobile, and no way
to live it down;
if I could send you oceans, love, I would but
you’d like it too much and it’s a drowning sort of season these days
you are become
my deep inner terror,
a hazy late-rising sun,
a heavy bitter ring as you speak,
heat buckling the sidewalks,
the interference running lines through the air to bisect my view
my crushed chest
my horses straining their necks to escape—
I try to stick words to you, you know, but
they don’t take


~~~



Sunday July 13 2003:

i would wish i were a cat
to sleep on your wide windowsill and hear the highway,
reminding me
my heart is free and
there are other places to sleep
besides this one



~~



if mountains crumble and I’ve seen them do
then tell me tell me what’s the goddamned point of loving you














posted at 6:12 PM

Recorded to memory live on Jul 03, 2003 01:01 PDT:


Mount Washington



“Wow. You’re doing a lot better than me.”

“Hmm?”

“I’d be all looking at the directions upside-down by now, you know…”

“Oh, yeah. I’m just going down, I guess. You know?”

“Yeah. But I’d be all backwards and like, you know, like ‘eeeftl.’”

“Huh?”

“You know. Backwards.”

“But it would be different. That’s not it...it would be...”

“Oh. Hmm. I dunno.”

“ ’Cause I’m going right.”

“Still.”

“Tfel?”

“Yeah. T...eff...ee...el.”

“Yeah.”

[Turn signal clicking loudly, sleepily. A pause. Nothing. We are
comfortable like that.]

“Yeah. And that would just be worthless. I mean, how stupid is that?”

“haha...heh...[doubling over, spilling out] yeah--”

[engine guns onto 110 south, I align my lights with the lanelines--]

“That would be just a fucking waste of time.”

We laugh the whole drive home, at night, the sky is imperial violet and
black and flat, the stars are invisible, the city lights blanking onto
my retinas like gunshot, flashing past, silent and strung through
distance to register vague and brilliant, brief as we pass like flashing
and the lights so stunning so fast on freeway asphalt----and we’re still
laughing-----there is nothing greater better or more real than this now,
tumbling towards the earth, I’m telling you-----------------------

amen

always the laughter.














posted at 1:46 AM

I have been going to El Coyote for years and years now
over and over,
with so many different people; but
what a lovely trip
this last one was-------------:



for Danielle

6.26.2003

What advice can I give you, she said
over margaritas—
“Just muscle through it” (her face going sideways as though to say she
wasn’t sure that was such great advice)
and that, it stopped me mid-sip, to look up across the shitty faux
Mexican stained glass and drained glasses and heavily salted chips with
guacamole,

and at that moment if I’d been an aerialist she’d have held me safe on
high-wires suspended by her dark eyes staring cross the table—
cos she’s so right, so right:

(and when your knees can’t bend
(--as they don’t so well these days—)
make your will to move you places your legs won’t go:
muscle through
just muscle through--)

“you know,”
she said
“things always work out okay in the end whether you
worry about them or not” and

all your words, darling, from that night
I’d like to tattoo cross the backs of my retinas
to burn them onto my thoughts, a mirrorimage imperative, a command,
backlit by the neverending parade of light and color moving
carousel-like across my face as
days come and fade,
suns slide up and fall down,
over and over, and over and over
Things working out,
Me muscling through,
muddling on and
missing you, and as for me,
consistently burning out to be illuminated again over and over.

(i got me a silver band with a phoenix on it,
had it since eighteen,
and the years confirm its proud propriety of place
upon my ring finger.)

with all love,

voodoo.queen.

---
from this altitude
it will come back to you--
If the Mississippi should wash me away,
Down to New Orleans,
Maybe someday in my dreams
I'd wake feeling the sweat
From the gulf in my mouth...
-sugar (bob mould of husker du)










posted at 12:09 AM

/lingua franca/

sycamore,
xenadrine

(--I’m glorying in it, it’s green grass to roll in, a page of lines to
eat up,--)

the syllabic division,
asymmetric precision
the language-lit engine
in my heart—
you, dear, you set
the tumblers spinning to unlock
what’s set in steel there,
a bone broken to heal tight and inflexible,
needing the words to set it straight
to set it straight
and I will always find lines to cut closer, finer, deeper—
syrah
tarantel
asymptote
parisienne
datura
rectilinear
glassine
…

(true love, it is;
and as they say, you should set it free, so
with each word I liberate it, coming closer to what’s inside of me.)











posted at 12:07 AM

...and i see now,
i see it is all so temporary,
i clutch and grab at stuff like it's my tomorrow, my day after, my lifeline and it
is nothing to you, or is only so much as
your weekend,
your story,
what you did,
who you saw

i am so impossibly hopeful
and stupid...






posted at 12:01 AM

...and i fluctuate so much,
happy and sad and back again and I've been crying out too much
think about you all the time
it's strange and hard to deal--think about you lying there,
and the blankets lie so still
nothing breathes here in the cold.
nothing moves or even smiles
i've been thinking some of suicide,
but there's bars out here for miles
sorry bout the every kiss, every kiss you wasted back--I think the thing they said was true
I'm gonna die alone and sad
-ryan adams.

baker baker, bake me a cake
make me a day, make me
young again
and I wonder, if he's okay
if you see him, say
hi?
-tori amos.






posted at 9:17 PM

i still love you
i am sorry





posted at 9:40 AM

there is nothing greater than this.
nothing dearer
or more real
shine on, love
shine and shine and shine and
shine it on like there's no tomorrow
there is no tomorrow.

i see every bit of you sparking and arcing and
god is in the details, love

when a year ago i abdicated all hope in the desert and shook in the rainstorm i forgot,
now i recall everything
and am restored to the mojave again,
thrown down laughing on the sandy earth that doesn't hurt when i fall in the dark.










posted at 1:51 PM

the essence of cruelty is injustice

how on earth could she not love you,
when you are like this?
so unspeakably lovely and good--
my friend, there is no god.
and what exists in his place is not just.

(...and I feel the pull to make up the indifference,
pale imitation that I am,
I am, I am, I am something of a shadow
tripping 'round your tall feet by your side where you feel she fit so well...)









posted at 1:00 PM

no thing sweeter,
more kind,
than this--
waking up here,
your arm flung over me and
i won't move
for the world;
the wind could wail outside and
dust can claw at the curtained windows:
i would stay safe right here
in wideeyed wonder
silent
i am stunned.

tell me
how to take these things so hard to say, and make them
into little phrases strung together
like something i could pray on,
one line written after another
to transport me somewhere else,
when i cannot explain?
when i cannot say a thing?





posted at 1:57 PM

Oh look. Poetry is dead.

Great. No one told me.



posted at 2:58 PM

my dearest friend--
we are bereft of
any pulling or tugging at the corners of language,
any way I could tie it up for you, kindly and reassuringly,
the way, the way the way I'd like to,
the way you deserve,
the way the way we go around,
strutting and fretting,
and so instead I send you every bargaining prayer I guiltily uttered,
every gusting wave of rage I've ever railed against heaven,
every upward thrust from the earth that stood me stronger under it all,
every maddened and raging moment,
I send you this and more,
a silent warm wind on your nighttime drive south,
ten million stars to guide you home.






posted at 10:35 PM

clichès are clichès for a reason

darlin please don’t…
cry
the apple of my…
eye
everythings comin up roses, roses roses
In our grim cocoon
In our worn out
language












posted at 12:27 AM

the kind of way you while away the hours the hours collapsing days,

i swear to god your rhythm is fucked up girl.








posted at 4:47 PM

it isn't in the water
it isn't in the wrist






posted at 2:25 PM

but it seemed
so
real

i am twenty-eight engines away from you;
now thirty-nine geese pointed south,
and one dumb one heading north
to freeze.

roll me down the hills i can't remember, darlin
down the halls i stumbled thru and dont recall





posted at 5:23 PM