my voluptuous. my home.

inherited forests

my father's forest.  my mother's.
walking   staying      shadowing
sometimes shooting

again.  again. 

crisp air and the hish of quakies.
the careful noise of feet printing
the frosted dew and no.  again no.

a bluebird day.
in a bluebird lifetime.

using confidence but
         they get wary.  too.    

airwashing breeze
and no anchor.  iron sighting
but      see how shiny these boots
are?        and then
always always breaking
always busting
                     never hup. 
and damn.  

that broken down rainbow.
chasing it
whole years,
listening to everybody's mamas about those colors
and ignoring everybody's papas about the mists

now glassing and glassing and what are they
even talking about?  raptured captured and
gone.  

neither are there now,  anyway.

keep on keep on deeper in, higher up.
to the montane and look.  for
one thing do not give up.  say
yet.

flinching even
with a big runner and
casting casting casting wide.  and wider.
following some other bell.

he's all birdy.
never holding.  and wavering at wing.
the jiggity of the hotspot jolts the nerves and
unsteady to shot.

jumpshoot
jumpshoot jump.
and rebound.

false pointing.  yes.
but finer than that and harder to scent
are the clandestine           the blinds.
the chasing prisms    and running for re's:
refraction.  reflection.  and others. 

being defeated by the specter of
a rainbow.   never yet has it been anything else.

passage

beginning with words it
contaged.  to singularity and
canon spanking

the uncodified allure of small fables
culled from cherish and
rare.  collectible.      

this leather and clutch.  these
moments of                     pure
eldorado

unadulterated,
horizontal riches and gold,
sharp finned             a new
strange       and staggering

with her aztec red
intentions and then that white
convertible top lifting and

oh            luxurious  glossy   
those cadillac thighs.
finally:  arrival.  home.  she had
come so far she was back.

===

published in Poetry Quarterly, summer 2012

blackberries

this is a story of ago.  
a remembrance. 

Once upon a time,


and drinking that
seven seas blue     lingering
eyes gave new visions
of nourished, and buds.

full and
unhurried hands offered
abundance and gave
small wildernesses of berries

and careful  

and

the sweetness was surprising. 
the want exotic

talking through the breakdown-----for k.J. with love.

am i crazy?  this is a ship which seems doomed, but all i find around me is silence.  it is the silence of the first winter snow, i know it.  and i'm in this thing pretty much alone so there is no one to confirm this but my own guessing self and the driver of this tub,  but i don't know if i just suspect it because of the past or if it is really happening again and i don't really want that so i try to ignore it, if it is an it, and so am i crazy?  why do i feel like a doormat? 

o distracted and chilly
remote paramour
i wish for you still
it's you i adore

i'm sure we are nearing the iceberg and nearing and nearing. what is this submerged absence?  there is something present under the surface and i keep asking the captain and get don't worry.   asking again i get busy-ness.     finally guiltily worrying despite advice otherwise and taking his valuable time despite warnings of workload pressures, i ask again and receive a have faith and an i gotta go there are customers here.  i have no faith but i have a pillow next to me with two cool sides and i'm sure of that.  but am i imagining this? he probably means it all.  which is almost like telling the truth.  right?

you're half-hearted and tepid
"amor" distant or dead.
affection saved up for
rare moments in bed

this reminds me:  prostitution should be legal.  is it legal in mexico? what is the difference between this and that, except i have health insurance?  well, and no one is paying me.  in fact he owes me 11 bucks.  of course if it were legal i'd be taxed, which at least i am not, now.  well, not taxed financially.  the whole thing is wearing and tearing, but i can live either way and i don't have a pimp pushing me around.  well, how is pimp really and truly defined?  again trying to discern the difference between this and that.  there better be a difference to discern.  not that there is anything wrong with prostitutes.  anyway, thinking of this is better than imagining other stuff, i guess.

annoyed and lackluster
drooping and dull.
you're torpid. and dormant.
i'm lonely. and cold.

                
am i crazy?  i know there is danger here but it isn't the crash.  the danger is in being forced to see volumes in the silence.  the freaking signals which are so easy to misread when people come from different perspectives or cultures--i mean, it's a bit like smiling at a monkey.  you could get your face ripped off just by trying to be friendly.  signals are powerful and words fickle i find--especially when the language of love being universal thing is fake and people really do speak in some sort of language with words and when the languages and words are different, it gets hairy. but since there are signals i only think i understand, and i don't like what i think i'm understanding, and the words of confirmation have been withheld, my plan is to wait.   for the words.  to hopefully not come. if i choose this i am not really a doormat, am i?  because i'm choosing.  right?   am i crazy?            
                              

without a doubt

heaven was bursting
last night and it snowed down color.
shameless bitter cherries dropped and the fig trees
were bare, the cracking skins of their fruit
revealing deep red flesh and seed and
drifting too from the sky.  ripe coming after flowering, 
they were naked in the storm.  the blizzard.

not questioning.

the kaleidoscoped landscape deepening
vividly made motion and
without doubting
that it was not whiteness settling
coldly,  motion was and

standing alone
in the night and then dawning.
the chartreuse
pears and plums hued of healing bruises
and those apples flashing their gardens
were all falling from above.

absence of color had been and
it was a familiar sterile clean and
its brilliance its lack blinded.  and

wishing now
for expected elements
would be wishing for a powdery
disintegration.  of skeletal structure.  and
for the chiseling of frozen into snowflakes
so pretty and so exclusive.

and made from very bones.

desert of the sea

you will cross that desert of cowboyed camels.
and taste one crabwalk kiss.
you will be surrounded by sideways smirks.
and there will be no relief.               no oasis.  
you will discover wild                      unhelpful
and frightening things.                     in the dark and in the light.
you will be lonely among the mountains
and mountains
of moving sand.

knowing:
you alone lost the map.

in honor of irene, or: the Really Bad Scene

we did not worry. 

because
we knew to stop, drop, and roll.  to put our
heads between our knees and to never make
eye contact with the bear.  we knew to avoid tall
trees in lightning storms.  and to stand in
doorways, step over logs carefully, and meet at a
designated place.  true:  one should back away slowly.
we understood to keep electronics away from water,
and venom below the heart.  we knew to always walk near the
curb, but not too close to parked cars.
we never spoke to strangers.

listen!:  do not ever kiss a dog on the lips.  

we knew to throw
food out on its expiration date and never to
let our mayonnaise get warm.  we did not
swim when a lifeguard was not on duty, and
always waited an hour after eating before
diving in.  we knew leaves of three leave
them be, and we did.  we knew how to
change a blown tire and to go to the
basement when the winds grew strong.
do not put butter on a burn.  

we knew cpr just in case.  

we had great respect for the danger involved 

in wearing nylon underwear or too-tight jeans.
we never went outside with wet hair or left
lit candles unattended.  do you think we would
smoke in bed? 

we did not smoke in bed.

we sat a proper distance from the television,
always read with adequate light, and did not
listen to music loudly while wearing earbuds.
we drove defensively and wore seatbelts.
we were so prepared. 


and then catastrophe came despite us. 
and ravaged:
or maybe it was just the pulsing of life happening,
and that coral chafing calamitous and vibrant against
the thin skin of the unliving,

the overly cautious.                         and
this surprising, this natural cataclysm

was unpreventable, it turns out.

and it caused us to fail.

about excrement

so, i just passed a business pickup truck advertising on its sides that it belonged to a company named "Doodie Duty", further described as a "premier pet waste removal" service.  um.  huh?

my reactions:
1)  har har, that is kinda funny.  doodie duty!  clever!  har har!  har.

2)  Hey!  there is far too much disposable income in this city/state/nation/world...no wonder there are riots and class wars and can we look again at that tax schedule, please?--, and

3)  humanity is getting farther and farther from "home", when it comes to living.  we remove ourselves from the un-pretty.  we outsource simple, any-child-can-do-it, ownership-responsibility related experiences to the point where it is anesthetizing, and are we/we are raising children who will not be adept at navigating the complex, ugly, and unwanted in their lives.  we are constructing a reality, when we can afford to, where we are able to and do refuse to look at the plain, the pain, the excrement, the difficult.

and those things--existing on a continuum running from icky (doodie and other seepage) to violent (war and "collateral damage") become remoter and remoter.  through distancing, we are also more readily willing to ignore the recipient body of our sightlessness or brutality.  it is so very easy to harm via dismissal or aggression, because we don't really understand, or ever have to see up close the effects and the consequences of our actions.  or lack thereof.

some ways we contemporary and american urbanized withdraw:  we take our ironing out.  hire cleaning services.  go to drive thru rather than packing a lunch.  drive to school rather than walk, when walking is a possibility.  hire dog walkers and gardeners and personal shoppers.  buy split wood instead of splitting it ourselves.  have our babies in hospitals (a human, and a product of this society, i say thank god for hospitals, compassionate and expert OBGYNs who kiss the top of my head and tell me i am beautiful when really i am a large whale in stirrups, and of course, epidurals.  call me a hypocrite.  i also like laughing gas).  we create circuses for our children at each of their birthdays, hiring the geeks, of course.  we hire people to mow our lawns, shovel our sidewalks, wash our cars, clean our gutters, paint our toenails, wax unwanted hair, deliver our groceries, alter our clothes--heck--make our clothes... .  we hire handymen to do insanely simple tasks that we honestly do not know how to do, and mother's helpers (in addition to the television) to give us a break from the needy people we are raising who must never feel bored and deal with that feeling constructively.  we send out fill-in-the-blank thank you notes instead of writing a few appreciative lines ourselves.  we buy prepared foods in boxes instead of ingredients, and "cook" by heating.   i am guilty.  and rather more often than not.

i am not admitting a discussion of economics here.  this is something else--i am talking about an entirely different point:

today, where food comes from is being taught in schools.
fish comes cleaned and without eyes from the fish monger, for the squeamish and/or uninitiated. 

we are disgusted by the very idea of hunting, tend to not eat food that looks like an animal (in english this comes down to even naming our foods ambiguously--pork instead of pig, beef instead of cow, etc., and what would Wharf say about that?) and are generally freaked out when we smell a farm or think about what's about to happen to that chicken being carried away by its feet.  we don't teach our children what real dying, death or dead people, or real killing or real violence look like, (nightmares are a bad thing), leaving them unprepared for the teenage world of epic violence that is trotting on down the road toward them--through video games and movies to their school lives, and then swirling out to encompass most aspects of this big blue marble.  by sanitizing so many dimensions of our lives and those of our children, we are, ultimately, creating a distance from some very real elements of our world.  for our kids,  we are creating an absence of experience which would inform the choices that they alone are going to have to make--and which are going to come their way.

i realize this list is limited, biased, and probably reflects much more strongly an urban tendency toward self-insuffiency, than a rural pattern of behavior.  also it is probably all old news.  also probably i sound hopelessly nostalgic and naive.  but call me those things:  i am not sure i like it when "self-sufficient" means "able to dial the phone".  because although we are in a world where technological advances (thank you, Steve Jobs--and that isn't sarcasm)  are making the impossible a smaller and smaller possibility,  we still are, after all, upright animals facing the need to survive in a world with others of our kind, if not of our ilk.  and though ironing is not diplomacy, and is a drag, and showing up at the round table neatly pressed will not help us make terrific decisions or take the time to reach positive outcomes, the ability to sit patiently and work through sweaty, potentially burning, tedious, mundane, rote and boring stuff--because it must be done--with some modicum of skill and/or grace, kind of is.

(i will not go into the general but stunting effects that current distancing trends in art--which lean toward censorship--have upon our development of an ability to discern, to form independent aesthetic sensibilities.  controls or attempted controls upon the literature we read, music we listen to, and films we see--and at what age we are allowed to do these things, make at least some realities far, far away, or even invisible--they are mind-molding and true constraints.  and i will leave off about how these blinders, as well, damage the up-and-coming from having a reasonable expectation for diversity, and reasonable ability to decide for themselves what they will find acceptable for themselves, and to be that, actively.) 

so:  a pox on those doodie duty people.  not least for making me actually think about and write the word "doodie". 

angelical fiend

tin can twisting.
crystalline tears.

                    to tell fools gold from true gold
                            stick a pin deep inside.
                                   crumbling or breaking
                                           are each a bad sign.

tin can twisting.
crystalline tears

rich temptation

a chamber cupped the
stolen reason, stolen
seeded seductive bloom

of ripened luscious, reclining plump
mortal apples that swooned,
and shone.  fleshy curves
and swollen pome:
                                                                                       
whispered rainfall
exposed rouge
the sonants of desire.

versed encounters.
scent,   fingers    tongue
opened to sweetness and
substance                  and

the inner forms ran juice
spoken with pillowed, spellbound sounds.
spun around the edges of fondness

betrayal and fidelity were
double hunger.  double thirst.
together composing the undersong
refrain: bite in         bite in to rich temptation.

cardinal wishes

you dim,



ephemeral flower

oh continue!

 and be

nighttime swimming

soft water at twilight
then black ink pooled.
pitch brushes wave brushes submerge.
soft water talking alone to the shore.            

soft water talking alone to the shore.  split
bonds feel bodied in cool.  be weightless.
howl razors and slash open the night:
cause the turbid sky to clear.  too
the moon      falling stars.  too those
grieving trees cant, their tips bleeding
sticky       weeping thickly.  sorrowing a
rapturous flow

soft water talking alone to the shore.  alone
to small pebbles dry dirt.  beam bright
midnight    evolving dawn     calling birds
and the blazing sun fervor hot day.
melt leavings.  melt spurn and dive
into sluice under surge
rushing swells
  
soft water talking alone to the shore.
freeze fresh and blue lips and blue hands.  feet.
fire dwindled   red died    rusted relics inside
ember and finally.  ash.  leftways abandon
and leftways just, bare and crackling.
and quiet