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