Ama's Poem a Day

fireflies

2011-04-15T21:14:00.002-06:00

life is a mess
or so it seems
a jangle and jumble
and we go insistently,
resiliently through

but we go haltingly
and abitoff pace,
go and sometimes
synchronize: fireflies
in a giant jar

happiness is learning how to fly without an airplane

2010-02-19T17:00:00.003-07:00

looks like there's absolutely no way to ask for and receive happiness from any part of the world. as much as i "am" and exist in the formations of my mind is as much as i can create my own happiness. i might bounce the very notion of it off other people and objects and mind-objects and then claim them to be the cause, but it was me all along.
the end of suffering is not happiness. the word is all wrong. if existence as we know it, as we've created it and continue to create it every moment, is not actual or accurate, then it is suffering and it is the cause of suffering. if suffering were to end it would require that existence (as we know it entirely) would also have to cease. so what am i left with then? another (no)thing to not ask for or receive happiness from.

in this reality i've created, i know that when happiness arises (or bounces back from something i threw it at) it must at some point end. as with my conceptions that create suffering. they cannot be maintained...because they are assembled of things that also cannot last. (ideas, delusions, cravings...) but say, i want something and then i get it. i'm happy with that. but is it really absent of suffering? musn't suffering exist in order to provide the other side of non-sufferings coin.

the risk of going on breathing is that everything must come to pass and go on and end. even me. even my loved ones. and it seems that the only way to "end the suffering" of this pervasive impermanence is by ending "reality". hahaha, so reality isn't real.

the eightfold path is a path written on the ground of the earth. it is words and ideas. but to follow it one must take up perfections which cannot exist on the ground of this earth through words. so, "right"-perfect mindfulness, perfect speech, perfect view, and attention...perfect action, perfect work. what i'm saying here is that the real request is for transcendence. luckily we have the only "yana", the only tool capable of breaking out, of creating the levity required for this flight: the human mind. (also, coincidentally the cause of our problems in the first place.)

bummer paradox: language and perception cause suffering by separating our own phenomenal bodies from the world, but if you didn't have them you'd be totally screwed...and you'd be ignorant because you wouldn't be able to learn...and ignorance prevents perfect knowledge.
really transcendence must be the way out. by wings or ropes or elevators, the way is surely up.

on the wonderful flip-side: gosh, it looks like all you gotta do is love. love until it lifts you up. love until you don't just love a him or a her. love your way out of anything you could ever say about it. love until you don't even know the difference between yourself and all that you love. i'm not really a fan of the Beatles, but it looks like they got one thing right.

friends with words

2010-01-31T10:33:00.001-07:00

1. meg
light across the window falls
in slats on the remains of bedroom
eyes, the aphrodisiac of sleeplessness, the
rapture of midnights faced with valor,
inamorata, eyes reclosing and stamps
of kisses on collars, delicate in the
scrumptious cottonbomb bedding,
as the sun returns the sky its name
a parabola on our tongues

2. matt
saturday, a party looms, music
builds in the blood, mingles
with whiskey vapors out to every
limb and in a voice, an echo lost
to the full tipsy moon busting
through this unseen sky

3. jen
in every use there is a joy and
in every joy a green coastline jagged
where ground meets sky, where
tribes make chants, inspire
spirits to kneel, pick up where god
left handprints, hold up totems and
drop tears in the sand

4. jessie
cast back, the sky is just another
color of ocean, an organic chemical
compound for eyes to enjoy, for
outdoor wallpaper, vacuous weekend
hours simple, dressed in nouns

5. me
paper petals make feuilleton trajectories
through naked midnight meadows
where owls hunt silence, where bats map
transcendence in lowveld basins, echoprone
ewers that return the long rush of blood

how to

2009-12-08T18:23:00.001-07:00

remember not to suffer a thousand weighted moments for ten of bliss; for real joy rises up from within you and cannot be bartered for nor won through coercion.
as romantic as you are, remember too not to suffocate nor to project any of your tactile visions on those you would presume to love. let them be, and they will let you be, so that you both may grow wise in the accrual of your own selves. you may be mirrors for each other and very little more; and when mirrors are brought close enough together they make infinite curving hallways. find a love that can walk you down that infinite hallway of you without anything but their own reflection as a map.

learn

2009-12-08T18:20:00.000-07:00

remember when you are smallish that nothing actually exists as you perceive. remember that you are smallish and nonexistent too. the whole rhapsodic verse of this world you sense is just passing through you. a melodic interference of the tides, a moonlight that you mistake for something more real. take your life up about you and wrap it tight like the obis of japanese concubines. take the cues from gods long dead. from the minds that had the influential power to create them. someone imagined buddha and jesus so fervently that they created them out of the flesh of man. become a creation of your imagination that rivals them and includes them, precludes them, as they do each other.
go forth symphonic and rhapsodize the world as you see it through your eyes...eternally through your actions. treat people as they are. they truly are only what you are - unseeable. and if you think you are to see them, first learn to see yourself through those same eyes. otherwise, don’t presume to know. what you think of your gift of discernment is not as important as the gift given you of humanity. the wheel of life has brought you here to learn a lesson that it hasn’t necessarily given you the tools to apprehend.
it is up to you in your youthful folly to begin to understand and be ashamed of the silliness of your waste of moments. see through your own moments and disregard anyone else’s version if it is not in line with the (un)god you see in every breath to (par)take.

dissimilation

2009-12-01T22:01:00.003-07:00

i would miss you if i weren't already caught up in some kind of amiss
and if i wrote to you, tonight it would rhyme. that sucks but it's beautiful
if only that meant something. it fucks me up that what i'm writing
could be sung.

i suppose that i am supposing. or cogito cogito ergo cogito sum...
a quote. meaning: i think i think therefore i think i am.
and yet...maybe i think too much and think i am something to be..,
thought about. but "i" come to realize that whenever i am lost,
whenever i am frustrated or disappointed; it is because i think...
that things should be other than they are.

well then, how am i to change things(?) perhaps by knowing. which is not
like thinking. i know in my bones that things about my behaviour need to change.
and the mirror of the people around me confirms it. but the change itself is
a downscaling. not an ascension to something that i can't be.

reader, i love you. because you are me. and if there is anything to love it is
me...which is you. if more needed to be said about the topic, i think they would
have discovered that about it 2000 years ago when it was being formulated.

and thank you. for loving [us] too.

mm

2009-10-21T21:14:00.000-06:00

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

2009-10-14T11:57:00.002-06:00

boulder

2009-10-14T11:51:00.001-06:00

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

2009-10-14T11:50:00.001-06:00

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

2009-10-14T11:44:00.001-06:00

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

2009-07-26T13:08:00.000-06:00

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...

2009-05-28T14:55:00.000-06:00

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

a hypothetical conversation: i am my own interlocutor.

2009-05-02T14:00:00.004-06:00

A: people are mostly stupid (uninformed, lazy, uneducated, foolish...)
this is okay.
get over it.

Q: ...who the hell are you to say that people are stupid? are you the smartest person around(?) i bet many of the people you call 'stupid' know a lot more than you about a lot of things...

A: and, just who the hell are you to be asking me who the hell i am? are you saying that i have no right to judge the people around me? even if i don't treat them like morons? this could go on forever: who are you to say...etc.

Q: aren't people worthy of "the benefit of the doubt"(?) isn't this what compassion is about?

A: no. people need to earn intellectual respect. and compassion is about seeing our kinship on a human level and not separating people from ourselves. yes, calling other people stupid is separating them from me. but maybe i can't be bothered to look past idiocy in order to "bond" with my fellow human.

Q: does it bother you being the asshole with a superiority complex?

A: yes. but it bothers me more that everyone else makes such a big deal out of it. i wonder if we were left to our own minds and thoughts without constant interaction if we might just slip down into our own personal madness...or if we might transcend co-dependence.

Q: but there’s something wrong with your worldview: you aren't and can't just be left alone to your own mind and life. you live in a society with other people whether you constantly condemn them or not. they're there. wouldn't you rather be happy than judgmental?

A: no. while it's true that there's nothing, short of going and living in a cave, that i can do to escape my place in the vast web of human society; this does not mean that i have to be okay with what i witness. happiness is dependent on the external world (and people), expectations being met. what i seek is a joy that wells up from within, regardless of who is saying or doing what to or near me.

Q: it seems that this joy would cause you to be kinder and more accepting of your peers instead of dismissive and "superior".

A: yes, joy leads to equanimity. and this angst doesn't so much manifest outwardly toward everyone else as fester in me; a constant and irksome nihilism. i tend not to reach outside with my words and thoughts in an attempt to harm others.

Q: why do you feel this way? what justifications do you have for thinking that people are generally stupid...and why do you even care? also, what makes you think you're not like them?

A: "why's" enter into the land of belief. and belief is tricky and shifting (don't believe everything you think). that said, i believe that the evolution of consciousness (that is, our ability to witness the world in a spiritual and intelligent way) has been seriously compromised and degraded over the course of the last couple hundred years. as a whole our species has entered a time of technological advance which has left our minds-- the very tool of perception-- to rely on crutches. (picture the world at this moment if suddenly every cellphone, computer mainframe, server, power source failed at once)...mayhem. and what have we gained for this reliance? every gain seems to come with more than equal and opposite loss. for example, we create medicines with our amazing technology to treat mental illness resulting from our lack of real primary relationships caused by technological reliance...moreover, these medicines end up in our drinking water and work their way into the genetic structures of our children, and the future of our species is compromised on a very fundamental level. everyone knows this is happening, and yet nothing is being done to remedy it.
i believe that the native americans and other indigenous people had reached the highest point thus far on every level in the evolution of humanity. they lived harmoniously with the land and had healthy relationships with each other and the earth and their gods. their technology was advanced enough to allow them comfort, yet did not destroy the environment in which they employed it. it's no wonder that the advancements into their land by foreigners had such a dramatic and damaging effect. i think that the susceptibility to alcoholism and drugs addiction, along with their repercussions, by the natives of this earth had a lot to do with the delicate balance that they had reached--a respect and reverence for objects, people, substances, and spirits.
we've now lost respect and perspective on the issue of our human place on earth. we have 10,000 songs on a device in our pocket; that device takes over 10,000 years to break down in a landfill. ("landfill" i hate the word. as though the land weren't already full...with land!) 88,701,000 i-pods had been sold as of january 2007, over two years ago. and what does it gain me to have all this music and distraction at my finger tips at all times? i find that instead of talking to the people around me, learning, teaching, and discovering more about our intricate human existence, i am updating bullshit on the ubiquitous "facebook", shuffling songs around, downloading movies, and rarely finding anyone who has something really worth saying.
the comedian CK Louis recently made a comment on late night television that kind of sums this up; he said, "everything's amazing, and nobody's happy." it's true, as our language breaks down into an unsayable " il B here 4 2 mins bro whr u @ i mn WTF did U here Wt she did OMG, lmao, yea l8r sk8r" we lose touch with our own minds. we lose touch with those around us. we're plugged in, and we don't realize that we're plugged into nothing because we feel so connected. it truly is amazing to hold 10,000 songs in a pocket, or to be able to talk on the phone anywhere at all, but what happens to these objects of persistent fascination in the long run, and what do they do to us on their way to their inevitable ends? the reason i'm tempted to point the stupid label at everyone (even me, i have to admit) is because we can all see this happening, and yet we do little or nothing to offset it, or to change our behaviour.
i think our unwillingness--or intentional ignorance-- might be due to the inflation of everything:
since the american industrial revolution (1865ish) we've been polluting more and more of the earth while slipping further and further away from each other. (huge gatherings of people these days seem, like legislation, to be more symbolic than real.) the graph of the extinction of species over that same time period is a gradually ascending slope that becomes steeper and steeper the closer to the present it gets. this could also be a graph for the inflation of time--or the perceived "time-in-a-day" in which we live.
as technology makes everything easier it would make sense that more time would become available to us. instead the opposite seems true; the more we can accomplish in a given day, the more is expected of us, the more we expect of ourselves. and so, time seems to "speed up", leaving us tired and depressed and alone. "no man is an island." except now, every man is an island.
i think all these effects, are the cause of a stupid and greedy species. we are hellbent on destroying ourselves. scientists and activists point it out all the time, we all know what's going on. and yet, the reason SUV sales are down? people can't afford them. that's it. greed and gluttony.
something is going to happen. the earth will react savagely to our stupidity. people will call upon the deaf ears of their respective gods and many millions, billions, of people will die. i'm not a doommonger; i can't bring myself to believe in the "doom" of this. i see it more as salvation...a truer atonement (at-one-ment), a returning to "god". (there can't be "punishment" without a punisher, so we will suffer incomprehensibly at our own hands).
i guess, after all is said, that i am no better than anyone else. i have an i-pod and a laptop and i've thrown away old cell phones. i consume foods that are grown by starving people and shipped halfway around the world to my kitchen. the difference that i see between myself and "others" is that i am willing to ask myself these things and converse about them and wonder why my life could mean anything in the face of such a hopeless future. (if you're saying to yourself right now that it's not hopeless, then you're exactly what i mean by unwilling to ask).

Q: that's depressing. why do you get out of bed in the morning? what's the point?

A: i don't need a point to wake up and live my meaningless life. i feel like i'm being honest with myself is all. there is no point. that's okay.

...flip. everyone is born a good human being, we end up kind of fucking each other up, but we're good. and we're all connected, through the earth and our collective human spirit. we probably won't prevail over the damage we've caused the earth and each other, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try. try to treat every single person with respect. try to see that it is no "bother" to see the suffering of others as our own. try to project the joy that wells up from within us and illicit it from others.
i am. i am the obese man in the ford excursion throwing a bag of mcdonalds trash out of his window on the freeway. i am the soldier shooting the child in the face. i am the pregnant teenager and the man who raped her. i am the dalai lama. i am the buddha. i am anger and calm. i am ignorance and intelligence. i am tolerance and hate. i am human.

people are basically good.
this is okay.
get over it.

give it up.

2009-04-04T03:57:00.002-06:00

give up. all your emotions. all your wants. make a prayer, call it what you will: dedication of merit. and then know, that even when someone says, "please, do anything, just don't hurt me." that you will. because you sir are addicted. and that when you come up face to face with your heart, you can't bear to look into its eyes for more than an hour a day and after you do you have to drink it all away to be okay.
fall in what you think is love and feel your heart beat for the first time in years, feel the tears come rushing out of you hot on your cheeks and watch her walk away. watch her not be okay with all this shit you've become and the lies you've presented her with, and when your friends were warning you about her, maybe they were just looking out for her instead.
cry tonight while you type this and fall from grace. like you ever have known grace. i wish, boy, that you could be what you once promised. you looked the whole world right in the face and said, "i can and will be this Man". and now...you, boy, go on being the sadder part of infinity.
wanting to blame it all on karma when you know damn well that you should just give it up and sleep it off and for god-fucking-sakes remember every moment of this to either berate yourself with later or to learn from. but at least to remember for her sake. you owe this to every sentient being that you supposedly make this dedication of merit to and that includes you.
i'm sorry. i'm very much not willing to die, and love is very much not willing to kill me, though it tries. she is the right one. right now. let me see this...and beyond seeing, let me overcome disgrace and show this to every person and creature i encounter. i owe it to no one but everyone: the god contained in every act and every moment. now.

it's a ship sailor. look at her.

2009-04-02T12:45:00.002-06:00

little bludgeon you thimble prick
and bloody drip break eyesight
sore to be so sired on a new year
text controlled flight shatter in here
blue but bright shoe songs time
and time drive sorrow uncharted away
up out of dark for air take train
rides play hands till oceanview
laughter at the sight of land-ho!
and behold a chewed up horizon
plasma rich skyscape and fish strewn
sand bars where you've been anthems
where letters in sock-drawers aren't
secrets where gravity is the history
of collision at odds with the prize
that is pride

2009-03-31T10:06:00.003-06:00

met your mother today
wasn't sure how to smile
which foot to stand on, shifted

loved her, and your brother
too, their house, big dumb
dog. look where you come from!

series 2

2009-03-24T20:49:00.002-06:00

created a mysterious life-
long heartbreak but forgot
life isn't as much long as
bad novels, greyhound rides

bright skies over night
cities, beds born in and
out of joy, grief, wrung hands
so many "oh.....'s"

screens made of god
knows what, flicker paint
strobe washes on walls,
faces everywhere

and so it starts
out in streetlight neon
pacing enigmatic in puddles
while cars whirl around

beginning

2009-03-20T01:23:00.002-06:00

there are geniuses
in this world playing
their dealt hand
while numbers or letters
make fractals in their heads

series 1

2009-01-28T00:13:00.002-07:00

cats are patient
i'm six years older than i am and
the night cattails, crumples
itself around us,
us around the nearest star

everything i've been told
about hope, or other beliefs
has come crescendo and mute
against this one mime
of life, this ossified sky

this is every plane in the night,
every airport sigh, all supersonic
and concorde bright, let us amen
with our eyes closed, dream a
perfect god, atone

my other brother blog from another mothers blog...blog.

2008-11-20T13:29:00.001-07:00

lookinme.blogspot.com

this is my other, older, first blog. god i hate the word "blog". but maybe some of the older posts in it will be worth your time. thank you for reading this.

here's time toward bright

2008-09-22T20:02:00.002-06:00

you'll be laughing at the sun
one morning when train whistles
blow the moon down behind
the mountains shivering over
there

your horoscope says you've got it
made today, hooray! well, i've got
other news, your shoes
untied, and your watch quit telling
time

everyone you see is a potential
ghost, you'll see, sometimes buried
in books, or walking beside you
hands held way up-
ward

leaves all over one day blow
sofa colors whirl and through you
walk collapse in the grass, ghostlike
go into work, blushing, eyes
bright

Pyrrhic victory

2008-08-25T22:50:00.001-06:00

there it is. pyrrhic victory. to have fought well and won, yet to have lost more than was worth your efforts.
:is a victory with devastating cost to the victor. The phrase is an allusion to King Pyrrhus of Epirus, whose army suffered irreplaceable casualties in defeating the Romans at Heraclea in 280 BC and Asculum in 279 BC during the Pyrrhic War. (Dictionary.com)

yay!

new words

2008-08-16T14:23:00.002-06:00

oh, to be a poet again
write what the heart remembers

after seven years somehow
returned to me out of time
you're so different, no longer mine
yet there's still an unhealed sore
in the layer of my heart
where you inhabited that great
cluttered room

and i feel entitled to posses
you there again, but i'm not
maybe we were wrong
these last seven years, wrong
to have departed, but we weren't
and that's how the heart mis-
remembers

over and over convincing me
that i guess, yeah, i do
feel actually and i can no longer
deny my lost loves' lasting
impact

oh, to be a poet of forgetfulness again. if you do something well, do it so that it inspires you by your success at it, enables you to continue. i think that's what my friends have done that i wasn't sure about how to do. so many things got in the way. maybe this is how i can remove those obstacles. maybe.

locality of digression

2008-08-16T14:22:00.000-06:00

locality of digression
8.7.08

the day passes away beneath us
hands malfunction slower circles
of mimic, was all we were
ever in this for was to show one
another what we are incapable of

love, we, lovely depart along
separate courses bound in
the night for other destinations
taste you on my teeth, mouth
aches with syllables spoken

ashen. sight out of crystal lifting
i know my future yet it, somehow,
doesn’t know me squeezes scent
doses out trajectory vector after
vector. rain, song, sun

live your way into your answers
your questions are pointless
otherwise, augment your life
with unknown languages prayers
to unnamed deities. let them
decide

decide hollow speech follows us

2008-03-26T00:49:00.003-06:00

some things friends go
burdening beyond our
pinpluck horizons
events which will decide
us

a whisperwish shallow
water dream awake into
our naked bodies pressed
between pages hollow of
us

furnish night with scenery
bright as overpass rain
flickers in our voices find
some fragile line to speak in
us

where we go in sleep
determines our horoscope
offerings of potpourri
wings which can only follow
us

tim

2008-03-05T23:15:00.001-07:00

friend i will be
with you there
so soon

new york!
a money/dirty
place i'll make

your friends
love me, you
love me

step up to
you, replace you
in the streets

i want to
hold you
tonight, you?

moderate deafining alliances

2008-03-05T23:04:00.002-07:00

been days baby
uneven days
since we watched
grass grow picked
ourselves up out of
it. our bellies grow

friend on our fleeting
bodies, a place we call
home knee deep in
the blood of us. i miss
our kisses, our pain

the dishonor of suicide
escapes my midnights
but i weep to call you
to me instead, daffodil
whiskey wishes on dandelion
tufts you taught me

so much. who i thought i was
girl kiss him silent
tonight. then, in the morning
forget your regrets as
i do.

untitled

2008-02-15T11:28:00.001-07:00

geese, gluttonous
for warmth go
flying, honk over-
head rewind
winter

malheureux

2008-02-11T23:46:00.000-07:00

sick in a strange land
where flags don't flap
though there's cold wind
at the windows
and my fever is slight
enough to chill me to
sleep

warm empty bed at home
where i wish
that even a stranger
sexy, would come lay
tonight while i'm away

her

2008-02-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

the moments between
when you are dressed
and undressed before
me collide, pink, lace

skinperfect, you glide
bite your bottom
lip, beckon and bring
me tingly to your

hip-cups 'valleys'
ignite tongue to
your thighs vistas
your eyes miles

away, love your
eyes molten inside
spine curved in
the cups of my hands

territory i enter
and leave, mapbook
in hand charts
your topography

rise and fall of your
chest as you sleep
my fingertips miss
you, my dreams are

suchdeep pools you
fall into

milkyway (?)

2008-02-03T22:33:00.000-07:00

how many consecutive heart-
beats lead to a full life peppered
with all failures, wisdom

what triad of experience lets
us see inside-out the whole
pinpointillstic life diagram

latent layers of dreams
in us collide with timewords
new worlds born in us

let loose what you love
and its wings being light
might return you tidelike

dash. dot. dash. DASH!

2008-02-02T12:49:00.000-07:00

cheers!
here's to losing hope:
we'll probably never
be together...fuck time!

"but time always fucks
you." true. but can't i wish
otherwise, i might have to
wait for heartbreak

so, connections don't have to,
can't, last over distance?
maybe i shouldn't have thrown
that penny into that pool

should have known i'd
find it wet in my pocket
later. cheers! to putting
the fun back in futility!

the tricky past

2008-02-01T11:02:00.000-07:00

smoking martinis

living slowly into sleep

this day a notending

everbatllement reading le fue

i fall asleep over and

over here waiting for planes

so many to take me ocean-

ward. over board walk the plank-

ton, yes, silly. i'm seeing your face

improvised in my curtains,

the small sliver of moon

that i nearly pointed out to

a boy waiting for the bus,

as i wait for your lips

lipelula.

NYT sunday crossword puzzle

2008-01-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

the whole mythology of
the whole universe
transposed over

a dirty old man's advice
of how to get in
a girls panties: black

berry brandy and
black cherry coke...
2

poor old woman

2008-01-29T08:08:00.000-07:00

the sun is dying!
our octogenarian earth, parched
cries out for allegiance

echelon feeders in the wide
ocean, flurry fish
grow sparse like landscape

tiny histories morse in
our minds blips, arias
telephone manifestos...

saints to save us
wake to the patron of
flying creatures

the sky is falling(?)!!
a spy satellite you can
hear on reentry

a makeup

2008-01-28T18:46:00.000-07:00

3.7.04
i never know
how the. the i gets
in the way
of the you.

do you?
see the relay
the devotional.
listens.

belief. the things
you see.
before you come
stars. lightening.
to me

looking down
behind me
i. below fear.
trust me

i don't like this poem, sorry.

2008-01-25T08:20:00.000-07:00

hello world, had something
to say to you last night,
forgot, but what's with all
the telegrams?

try not to remember this,
as tough as it may be, last
nights dream was still
a dream

which drops off now in today
drops me from high off
into laughter and joy

sun inside

2008-01-24T09:42:00.000-07:00

my little room, whitening
here in the morning sun
without us

your bodyghost in time
goes through my heart
without words for us
without inscape
apperception

love, where in me
have you burrowed
in what array will i
find your siren song

my little room warming
like a cat in a sun
fragment inside me

a song for tim tolka

2008-01-22T23:48:00.000-07:00

some cant help but keep
those they love
furthest from them
but there is a beach
in this world where
a boy cries alone

wishing for a her, sometime
they were and reminisces
like a bomb far off, memory
begets sadness like the bible
begets begets, like breath
begets life begets love
begets heartbreak

on a beach, tim, your heart
is an open joybringing believer
and you are its only victim

so shine, then be smiling
there in the world which
cuts us into shapes we
no longer recognize, sunlight
the whole of you littered
with foolish awarenesses

shed past shadows like old
bread given to birds on
a pier, be woken by your wounds
bonds, be catching the next
train to another language to
hope to get it right

your life is a book i'd love
to read, your song: a ballad
i wish i could sing, this mess
of us: our strobelight lives:
acid to the honorable mind
of our creator!

free letter from ago

2008-01-21T11:58:00.000-07:00

i just found this gem waiting in my computer. i wrote it on 6.24.03. i guess it was some sort of letter. i like it. some of it i don't, but wow, what was i on back then? :)

I think my mind is dripping, sickening me. It is June and warm outside but the dark air keeps swirling out bits of white that I double-take at: SNOW?! and beyond this city, you’re out there smiling right now I’m sure. people sometimes move like taxis, like racoons along sidewalks, I spy them from my car slipping out of sight, cottonwood fluff.
The way the dreary angels form tonight’s sky might be the pattern of arrangement I’m organizing you into. down the kernels, and then corridors, my language is diseasing me, disrupting my other breath. this pattern is unsettable, unstable, I can’t seem to stack you no matter what city you’re in, though I miss you. sharks are not clingy or unpalatable. dipped in butter and cooled on paper towels, I can’t fry you any longer, I can’t fry me-patrol my shores: borders.
I can’t remember one absolute number. I can play anything using the infinite scale. I knew your doorstep like Jamaica. I could walk in whenever, often you were there, sometimes not. I’ve heard that things end beyond letters: writing them, making up alphabets with them. alpha-bets alpha-bets. I’m never gonna see you again. I’ve quit seeing solely beyond my own illusions. I’m slipping away, my tide is out out out.
I found some pictures today of the mountain I used to work on wishing for love. I’ve loved twice since then. I want to knock on your door again for the first time and do it again and again because back then I was writing. My phone rings all the time now with your voice and I’ve learned tons about astrology and friendship. I capitalize my I’s now. i hate it.
I had a dream of a ghost. I keep seeing the little black boy from my dream. everyone’s faces look like him. but I never saw his face, he was walking away from me. I want to talk about it, like how we talked immediately about your dream of the love poem from me tacked on the wall in some hallway with your name written on it in red. If I say “long sentence”. what do you think first. This is just a gauge of health.
Some graves can be slept in all night like the tower of technology that I plow down in my mind with every keystroke. All I have to do is throw out my wrist and steal quotes off urinal walls. Call me again. I’ll try to write you some more prose littered-trashed with pronouns. try to believe.
Love, me.

cold out. :self illo motto w/ k.k.

2008-01-21T08:25:00.000-07:00

snowed all night
the streets slick, trees
heavy with it, eyelids
too but up to coffee
permeating my tiny
room, scent-silence

the pitfalls of the future
just a quirky forever
pull at present, frost
at the panes, smoke
at the flues

mars dances this month
with the grapefruit moon,
dangles its red right there
colored salt so you can
see it in yr eggs

wanna go to england
italy euro currency
language mosaic
cobblestone alleys too
narrow for sunlight

tonight...holy fuck

2008-01-20T02:54:00.000-07:00

my eyes look green tonight
got grabbed by the neck by a cop
some drunk chick said i look like a super model
past-due stamp on my wrist like i have a real job

it was foggy earlier, made me think my vision was off
the sky played crazy tricks on my brown eyes
i keep thinking about a plane ride, what i will write then
i was some kind of pseudo hero in the bar tonight

this is saturday. this is the first moment of the rest of your life
boy. okay. well, i'm a hundred dollars poorer and i am in love
maybe with an apparition, but i think
not.

enjoys solitude

2008-01-19T19:22:00.000-07:00

believe
your soul
exists

everything happens
has for
a reason that
things mean
something

then there is
no betrayal no
allegiance no
need for that
which is not
You

book list # 1: jan. 2008

2008-01-17T23:19:00.000-07:00

i decided to post a list of books that i really like. so every month i will post a list. i will arrange them by country (for the most part), and post one book for each country i choose. the countries may vary, but i hope you read some of these and let me know what you thought of them. thanks, -t.

UK: Written on the Body, Jeanette Winterson

Japan: A Personal Matter, Kenzaburo Oe

US: Gravity's Rainbow,Thomas Pynchon (not as much a recommendation as a dare :)

Germany: The Glass Bead Game, Hermann Hesse

Russia: We, Yevgeny Zamyatin

France: Literature and Existentialism, Sartre

Argentina: Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges

Czech: Immortality, Milan Kundera

Italy: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler, Italo Calvino

Ireland: Dubliners, James Joyce

i hope you enjoy these if you read any of them. i consider some of them quite indispensable. others, merely impossible.

a prayer

2008-01-17T22:47:00.000-07:00

make a list...ten things you want to be or do before you die. treat it like you just found out you have cancer. make a list of the ten most important things to you. 10.

1. love. every aspect of love in all it's heart rending, confusion causing, god in my chest, love! everything about it. i want love. love that is without object, yet embodied. love that lasts and that i'll never take for granted.

2. wisdom. i want to know the difference between what i think i know and what actually is in the heart of what i call god. i want my decisions to have the weight of my past lives years in them. wisdom, the ability to distinguish the truth of this moment from the "truth" in my head or the "facts" at hand.

3. humility. i want to know how little i know without being discouraged by it. i want to look in the mirror and be at ease with my flaws. slip out from under my vanity. humility, to realize how very little i matter if i only matter to me.

4. enlightenment. yes, a big one. no, not impossible. i already am, so says buddha. but...my eyes open so slowly to this fact that i wonder and wonder. i bet if i didn't wonder i would see through seeing and touch the heart of existence. may this be for all of us.

5. travel. to see this perfect, and sometimes terribly marred, earth. to breathe it in and breathe out my love (as a friend wrote in a poem). to pick up the pints and ploughs of the reaches of this planet. ah, to inhale the scents of lands i've never seen. to carry home in my pocket, and my heart on my sleeve. this must happen.

6. writing. i want to write something that i think is worthy of further inspection, publication. i want to explore my mind fully enough that my ideas are not just bursts of inspiration. to remain inspired. i think love might be holding hands with this one.

7. freedom from addiction. this seems so damn serious. and i suppose this one really is. i could be so much more. i could much more easily achieve some of these "goals" if i weren't addicted to substances. this also must happen by a strengthening of my will. and it will!

8. health. since i was quite young, i've said to myself: may i never be unable to do whatever i want to do because i just physically can't. so far, for the most part, i've been true to that dream. i know that youth doesn't last forever and i want to be healthy as i age. this is something i have confidence in, and i am proud of my health. but i must never let this fall aside.

9. to teach. i've found that i have a knack for teaching. things that i do well, i tend to be able to teach well. i want this to go further, for people to be able to learn great and interesting things from me. i want to inspire people to help each other know things.

10. peace. this world has been so violent to itself for so long. in my lifetime i would love to see a united planet. people more interested in love than in patriotism or themselves. i heard somewhere that everything we do is for love. from the cereal we buy to the jobs we work, no matter how mundane, it's all for love. if that is the case, what could possibly be worth fighting for. let's return home and see our childhoods and remember being held. let's forget what weapons are for. i want peace, inside-from my mind and my hearts rebellions; and outside-for the world not to have to bleed so much for so little.

10. just ten. make yourself a list. it's urgent. you could pass from this life at any moment. quit worrying and make a list you can believe in. then believe in it...it's you.

momentary rest

2008-01-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

boys go arm in arm
with some girl down
the street go as the night
turns over in its restless
sleep.

young, we are subject
to masquerades of flight
but somehow lift off
the earth, become
ethereal.

find you afar and wish
as though time were real
that you were here
to kiss away
my shivers.

silver, cinematic
the night is a drunken
mans joke of drink,
a star or two nearby
blink.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0

i miss you so much and it's just because of how much i know i'm gonna. but alone tonight, i don't dread, i tread sleep. my dreams of lions on a beach wrestling for...fun. i love you without wanting, to know what it means. we semi-possess each other from this distance, but we see the same world; our own. when you say that you think of me i feel the sun through my skin, my chest warms and i call out in silence for time to not exist...as i know it doesn't. please love, hold me in your heart until we can prove our ascension, ignition, and become upwards always.

a thank you, for kate k.

2008-01-15T02:28:00.000-07:00

this is my whole heart
open, a wound in me
this is my whole heart, a universe unwinding
unfurled upon this moment
this is my whole heart, a song offered
this is my heart, the peace of being
human and bearing breath
this is my whole heart where blossoms open
and champagne galaxies are born to sparkle

this heart, your heart; how heat swells
bring us full to our tears and skin, our
lust for the unknown
this heart, who translates sense to idiom
makes us laugh and forget, makes us
remember when we are

this is my whole heart, an open wound
in me where i hold myself still and listen
to your every sigh as we dream off our days
in my heart where we are unstoppered
and overflow

Tamil style poem of Love and War

2008-01-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

no, we will not break bread for tradition.
we will not let our bangles go limp on our wrists.
we will not cry until the battle has come to our door and then passed on, over.
no, we will not think a thought of love or death.

if god is asking for allegiance, then god has other doors to visit,
for who is really the breath of my breath[?]
who is the rhythm of my hearts blues
who brings the sun home and tucks my heat in at night

universe if you do expand, i'll feel every stretch
in my birdcage chest.

Epistle for a nametag

2008-01-13T18:52:00.000-07:00

Dear Lint,
last night i dreamed we were driving
around central park in an old Mercedes
at midnight,
your yellow cat was curled up on your lap
and we watched the city lights blur like halos
around everything.
Ella says she saw you at the market yesterday
buying shoes. keep kicking old friend.

-Trivet

a rose is a rose is a...tangerine?

2008-01-11T19:32:00.000-07:00

found a blue button
on the street today
reminded me of your
peacoat preserved
in memory like
pickled ginger we use
to cleanse our palates

by candlelight you
keep company until
the night drains
itself into dawn and
on this day jasmine
tea to wake us

publish your dreams
in scribbles with your
fingertips on my nape
make a palimpsest of
me like Sappho's
papyrus scrolls

found the imprint
of your head on my
empty pillow
this morning
i sighed and
placed my ear
where yours had been

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

falling in love, always with "likes". a floating stone. for one second at a time we can be who we are. enjoy the same music, skin against skin, what other things beds are for. take away my words, leave me with truth after truth. we cannot be left to fend for ourselves in a world in which we both exist. but we, birdlike, blow away...return...and are fended for. and, yes, time is a circle of our own invention, but lucky for us it uplifts as it returns. words fade and we are left like prayerflags in the breeze facing ourselves/each other.

for the one i missed...

2008-01-11T18:33:00.000-07:00

there is nothing blue
or word like worldlight
nothing big but bracken
stark on less stark
sky

"women drink from mirrors
like thirsty stags" and
their images are magazine
clippings caught in the wind
wash

my own unsightly stares
carom room to room
overwhelm themselves
become beacons

or whirl up away to
be helium filled
parasols, big skirts caught
in updrafts; gleeful my
eyes

there are two kinds of people...

2008-01-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

now that i've found my heart
i know how to hold it out
take it back
break it
give it back
make it
taste

i've found out how we live
the necessary hypocrisy
of juxtoposing
soft soft nights
with loud solid
days

my calloused hands hold
hers, my own heart
out warm drips
gleams into
her eyes

my wine sight
peach pie worries
see bueskywhite
winter whir...

to be promised a human life

2008-01-08T23:27:00.000-07:00

binary, a songscapade
taught me to climb trees.
my dear friend, on stage
you are a silly ghost.

hi. hi. pretty eyes. yeah.
where my youth went,
the same games that took
it...further, further!!love!!
yes and, i feel so...

right now the frame
for later eyes, without
smiles. with joy beyond
face.

loveVOLTAGE

2008-01-07T23:37:00.001-07:00

my heart.
and reading about oil.
but i know the tears will come
soon enough, i already feel
their well, readily inside
me. i am in one place but
for tonight i'll stay with me
and pray.

oh skin tingles, this
romantic poet displaced
in a time of "crisis" internal
jump ups to not mention
instruments. i miss you
already and we mingle in
my shivery mind, wait!
love there is no difference
but potential difference
and WE are a distinct measure
of current!

falling up

2008-01-06T17:19:00.000-07:00

"The minute i'm disappointed, i feel encouraged.
When i'm ruined, i'm healed.
When i'm quiet and solid as the ground, then i talk
the low tones of thunder for everyone."
-Rumi

my soft roar goes in then out
love, you're everywhere: in
pigeon flights, paper scraps
coffee steam, my heart
swells charged lightning
i am drunk on the night
sky, your name: a pillow of air
rushes up under my crepe
wings and i touch the face
of god.

oh yes!

2008-01-05T22:19:00.000-07:00

bubbles electrical bills boredom
but every baby becomes a big one.

(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)!(!)

girl, nightwise, you're taking
me further into reset
your text, eyes met connect
tremble, why am i so
afraid of you. circumstance
says all this huge hearted-
"oh, my god!" whisper will
wake me, punctuate my sleep
with kisses!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!yay!!

on leaving

2008-01-04T14:21:00.000-07:00

sometimes in the evening
things happen for no reason
and we wander, learning
how to respond, instead
end up crying dark
at the windows a spread
spot on a pillow how
to feel again

*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*_*

walking concentric circles around myself. want not to hurt people, but there's a minefield in my heart. and i see how much trouble i was as a martyr. it sucks just as much being on this side of things. and she's so quiet. doesn't cry out and bang down the door. just hangs her head and i feel both of our hearts: mine quietly stepping back into a loneliness that i sensually don't even want, her crumbling in the chest that old familiar sinking. oh, love, i wish words could ever be enough. actions make just as little sense. breathe peace. breathe.

night echoes

2008-01-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

"wake up." whispers
it's morning and
there's a whole world
outside the windows

was last night a...?
maybe, but her lips
could i have...
dreamed such wonder

now the day haze
giving up cigarettes
for dozens of coffees
still, those lips, on mine

all day
up and down ladders
tool belts bulge,
cold air tries the door

i am hotchocolate
warm

mosaic

2008-01-02T08:33:00.000-07:00

rataplan, tintinnabulation:

the ocean or a rain storm
mice in the walls, sweating
ozone churned above shore
warm drops on a slate roof,
a face----

----tired eyes, tousled hair
weary from a night of tossing,
inhale coffee, clutch a mug
sun dapples, ripple in the
windows----

----hear a glass fall some
where far off, tinkling
index of refraction, a prism,
la feneetre hold back gloom
make the gelid ebullient

thimblebrook

2008-01-01T18:55:00.000-07:00

we might be
a bunch a
bundle,
a cherished thimble
hugs and sly
sidesmiles
candleglow a mock-
ingbird whistle

if the sun
is in the milk
the broomclock
is a whelk

adieu 2007

2007-12-31T08:54:00.000-07:00

tic-tac telegram, time to bring in another year. auspiciously, may the stars and other bodies align themselves tonight. let us see what bright words and other effluvia we can wave this time around.

so many loves lost. out there breathing, bathing, laughter...i don't wish for them, i echo in their echoes in me. no hard feelings, we are one.

i'll pray for belief. so that i may begin again to see through divine eyes. i'll pray for inner peace. so that i may have room for what i am able to see. i'll pray for outer peace. so that others might also see.

one

2007-12-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

day you'll be arisen to
where you already are
spun up into the pinhole
windows of the sky

gently forgetting
your childhood,
forgiven

and in all endless
at-one-ment you'll
still know how to dance
and sing, put pearls
in the hearts
of lovers