mm

my love, my love whose voice is dusk sweeping up the ashes of day
who speaks in swerves and returns vertiginous covering her eyes with squints
my love, whose eyes are torpedoes churning the sea toward me
whose eyes are tropical squalls impending
my love whose neck is a bamboo temple, whose neck is an egyptian obelisk etched with runes of the future
my love whose feet carry an emperor, carry a galaxy, whose feet curve gently toward infinity like the face of the universe
my love whose navel is Aphrodite’s dimple
my love who careens through me on Icarus’s wings, comes close to my heat, a bat overhead swooping
who walks through me like novels, as through walls
my love whose breasts are heaps of cinnamon, warm loaves, painted urns, whose breasts are hieroglyphs of lock and key
my love whose hips beacon and repel: a lighthouse on a craggy shore, sirens singing arias
whose back is a row of pigeons aligned against the sky, whose back is an envelope opening to a love letter
my love whose arms twirl out song and spin like Sufis, enclose me and send me away to my own wishes
my love whose hands are branches tearing at the sky
my love whose wrists are sprigs of mint
whose brow unfurls at my caress, whose brow is a quilt when she cries

in America

boulder

this town
laid out before me
walking slowly down
its snow mantled
quiet, down its
damp asphalt losing
consonants for coffee
this city clothed old
in brick and stone
transitions to soft
bundled in scarves
toward christmas, breaths
plume, pick up “ahh”
sound hands in pockets
i stride streets past
frosted windows
past cafés, people
in patterned sweaters
inside speaking of other
people over piano music
this town reading
newspapers about itself
yesterday predicted snow
now flakes fall
catch in my hair, eyelashes
i go inside, listen to
door hinges, voices
murmur, espresso whir and
footsteps
cars lurch around billowing
rush from light to light
on wet black in this
city they’re hanging
wreaths and strings
of christmas bulbs bright
green, yellow high on brick
façades above storefronts
little boutiques where
dresses and jackets glitter
wet beach sand from
the windows

on love on 5.12.04

if it were mine to,
i’d offer
any word synonymous
with, “universe”
up to you
out of this
language of mine:
love.

but i’m not sure
what that word is,
“everything” is close
containing “nothing”
inside it
but this is beyond
things.

though all the universe,
even this small
dark room,
is comprised
of so many objects,
people.

love is why.
why we breathe
and exchange
even objections.
“without object”
means love
in every direction
those words:
the answer.

9.20.09

the mess of you in my bed,
the whole spread out fling of us
in this weary world where
we topple each other and
our topographies combine,
make new wavy maps like
marbled paper, where we
shimmer and swirl, become
untraceable light
_____________________________

god, grant me more than serenity,
grant me sovereignty to know that
i am always my own, and no one’s.
grant me the will to disbelieve and be
proven wrong, to give space like a
spray of flowers and love myself like
the sky seems to love the wings of
raptors, the cries of starlings.

how i want to call you honey,
by any other name your nectar
(drink of the gods) would be as
sweet. but you bite, like whiskey
leave me
intoxicated by your warm breath
your cold cheek, diverted eyes
ring out: go now before...

and when you sleep, behind your eyes
i battle, the forgiveness of sinners; saints,
and wake up with blood in my hands
like a tempura paint mosaic in the
making. love, you stain me for days.

and how with my iris, cones and rods
am i to look round and revert the inverted
world we’ve created in my full heart.
how am i to relearn to see, see you taking
wing, feathered, picking yourself up from the
mess i’ve been, like my bed after you,
in your whole life.

my tears come with difficulty, force
themselves out of me and fall with thuds
to my thighs. these are the nights full
of stars and friends, where i see the drift
of time swallow me as though i were a single
kernel and not this dynamic cataclysm.

solipsism

write down, sit, the dictionary
falls over beside the bed
recall a floating feeling after
a binge night, what to say
to her damn demanding eyes
her flicker response to my fall
and fuck you’s all around
the yard strewn with cans old
friends in town don’t say no
or get lost after all, what’s a
party when i’d rather be buried

in her breasts or mound of
venus, rather be soaked not
sodden - a sod - bird beggar
left to sleep it off with a tome
of language besides who’s allegiance
is my sense to: her legs, cleft,
navel, iliac crest, lips, oh what
full lips from between which
such cramped oft languorous
much melancholy dribbles...
but to take me into her mouth
and want so much from me
at once, what graceless beauty
but beauty!

response to tim's letter...

we wander the same streets friend, staring at all the people, placing them in the categories we can name for how they dress, how they hold their heads or hands. we try to find ourselves out there in amongst that throng of people. pretty girls in pretty dresses, tan legs unfolding on park benches. sunshine littered all over everything. even the dirty, stupid, stoned old men who ask for a slice of pizza or a dime...and yet, we can’t find ourselves there. the men that we are, are not. because we haven’t put ourselves on those same streets; we keep these men chained up in our heads with shackles of words and notions of “self”. the man in the suit very well could be, is, you. as is the boy who was flung out to the world and scattered over its face chasing an illusory man.
your third eye knows this; knows that the looking must be done the other way around. there’s nothing to be stolen, only a sense of being the victim of a theft. maybe because money says so. maybe because those girls rarely meet your gaze with theirs, and when they do...they’re crazy right. yet behind your eyes are your true eyes, look back in and then back out and what really matters becomes more evident.
there is great temptation to blame this lackluster slothful society for our own distressful ennui. there is the temptation to blame the “man” for asking too much. but we have to know, have to take away a different ease and take responsibility for our vision. existential crises too often get bullhorned, shouted to everyone else (who surely doesn’t want to, cannot hear them). hold your anxiety closer, hold your abhorrence for the men with pockets full of cash closer. “everything’s amazing, and nobody’s happy.” -CK Louis. want to be the exception? you’re halfway there. put down these amazing devices, pick up a book–or don’t–and begin to see yourself being the man you always wanted to be. because you are, and you don’t owe anyone a fucking thing for it.

as for what keeps us off the streets and able to take girls back home and get in those dresses: that is called the seat of our pants. fly by it. we’ve got healthier senses of entitlement and healthier doses of middle-class luck. it is not written in our futures that we should actually have to live without a roof over our heads. like the grifters in the movie “the sting”, we’re smarter and know the game too well to let it play us. always, just by a thread, managing to hang on. one damn dollar, one damn day at a time, but always singing loudly in our heads. -t