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