up/down/side/through-grade

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won't you come along?

cough man

seams unstrung stringing sing song on a
duke ellington juke
while darjeeling bitter steeps on the marble
table tops of gypsy jazz
and crayon colors whip gem green dough
from double stitch skinnies -
no foam.

SEVEN droogs scanning top to tale
seesaw tripping the free bin suffice.
who's jock sharp enough to buy an honest coffee
grown some place in the shade
by some singer with a name
dragging paddi rice through neon fields
stead'a dropping the month's on sun shades?

everyone is no good, false fake too busy
and the head chisels in this kfc frenzy.
the FOURTEEN will get you where you need to be
and back again
(with a torn orange transit this month)
banking on catching a drowning jumper
that cannot pay.

the green man chirps and the dogs waddle
their wares; on the rocks;
on someone else's block, who got famous here
and wrote a book about it
another book for the kaleidoscope shelves
begging for the top of THREE minutes
just to find something you may not be looking for.

the tip tap typers sit in their roasteries
thumb tacked dot to dot on the map of the world
squinting hours eating away as they crave create
the future
with a pinch of hing and apple cider vinegar
and tweed duffel bags that find their ways into
international sleepercar crevices.

the day will come and has come when we will
stand on the mountain, the silver mount zion
(tra-la-la),
and not double back at the copper penny scatter.
with finger snaps the pastries will order
along driftwood park benches overlooking cities
we begin to claim.

scatter like pennies that no one picks up
but we turn, heads up,
to grant some sort of hoorah-la to the not in a hurry.
monocle maniacal monarchs
we spread like fiery sparks to cover boundaries
pounding with carrion. we pray on prey on prayer
wayfarers.

afraid somehow of the again. letting the hub dub bobby nothings scratch at my decisions as if someone else is dying and i have fuck all will to save them. this light is out: along rav's strings, along gav's rows of vitamins waiting for the ferry to slow down, pull in, tie up...stop!

marsh

in a place such as this
you spend the days capturing
egrets
white crested
that search for food in the low tide.
you wonder about your mind
and how it doesnt stop wandering.
you wait as you gather snippets from the hovering collective
and you stay sane by watching the sunset -
by remembering why you are here

curling chess men

the chai is simply to watch them
four bucks for a steaming edge
or after hour divorce

the city grabs me visceral
holding in on a ferry ticket swipe
and a typewriter too big for its age

all from somewhere and then here
we are no where
and the head swivel pounds

amounts and cigarette butts
and artists wasting acrylic
in alley galleries

dubious

missive missed connections
on a bicycle riding fast in the fire lane

and adidas carry bags left for cold
in mission foyers
on community funding

where are you friends
so we can ride these streets
on sung stories

and photograph minutes that choke
and climb up trees and telephone polls
to hear just what the world is saying

roastery

so much hulla-buz

the pastry girl
flirting with the customer
one extra dollar
one less muffin

one more plaid flannel
even in fairfax.

my books are stained with black tea
and his whistle as he watches them
romance
over the fair trade sumatrian

like any hairsprayed number
star-crossed
i never thought it could be real
even in fairfax

waiting for bus 29

some fix at screens
some in politics
some over toddies
and some too much cream

i'll be late
he'll be waiting

sioux falls

“We are told we’re never supposed to understand Wankan Tanka, only to gaze at its infinite perplexity.”

the perfect shadow

i feel the scraping sound of velcro
and turning stomachs
ricocheting off the walls
like flatulence at a cocktail party
or a monocle in the ghetto.
i am here like i own here
and can press any buttons i want.
the streets are all lined for me and the lights turn
as i ride
the questions have already been answered
and my shadow looks blustery

lo siento, i am a

thank you sir for cutting my hands off
right all the way up to the elbows
so that you can feed me the food
that your shiny machine makes
as it hums in its monodance

and for giving me all the time i need
to comb my hair and brush my teeth
and wait in concrete jams
so that i can click away at air conditioned files
that somehow equal my living.

thank you for bottling my escapes
so crisp and potently
and for making sure that someone will tell me
what youve been up to all day
on a flashing blue box on my 'sierra night' wall.

i am grateful for your warranties that are so spot on
about when i'll have to come in and buy a new one
and for lending me money if i am not ready to afford
on my own.
such compassion.

it's ingenious to ensure i get my veggies
in liquid forms
but cutting out all that unnecessary sugar
that could make me FAT.
so affordable.

one day i'll tell my greatest grandchildren
just how you looked after me
and how in my day we could go to the movies
with $30 and come home with change.
long live mama gaia.

zachor

1-1-11

i have one candle; two commandments
and the window is a night mirror
waving in breath
everything is labeled with a line
of masking tape
and the words, predicted
in my loose curl type
i want to get out of habit
and become nothing
predicted
conceived
- able
dangling
the ledge to drop just fine

this water outside, salt red,
charts every pumping i will to touch, hold, held
where you are, where you distinguish
this reaches to you, into you
metabolizing, anesthetizing

tonight is different from every other night
that. has never been.

"from the depths of the mirror a corpse was contemplating me"

snow

the branches like eclairs holding tufts of white morning
screech as they move in the dry wind that laps at your freckles
nothing has walked on the lake but cats and deer
and the iodine os frozen

the earth is green and crunched under this sleeping
and my body is ready to move in the air

these words came when i saw it
the pointed finger nail ice dripping from the pipe
the welcome sign laced with night
and here they are fermented

december

there is nothing on my mind else much now but the crystals that are falling from the sky. 

there are fluffy crystals that are falling from the sky and they then become fluffy crystals on my hair

i see you standing in front of me with the eerie night porch light and looking into my eyes and the accumulating white and then closer, kissing, cold lips that become fill, pulsing, warm with love

seventy five, forty five, 178-180

the winding roads welcome
and the dust leaves crawl across the tar like small creature
spirits
watching your turn

i feel i would hit something
like boxes and solo cups
strewn
as i watch the moon

hover
like a tan chrome
swirled bowl
hand-painted

in this calm
i change the world
and we circle round each other
as we had to from our conception

and august will be a month to keep.

ive always written on this night

the house, my home smelled of sauteing shallots from midday 
and wine, cooking
and ideas inspired
my toes froze in my socks up and down the stairs to fetch ingredients
and it came together somehow as it does
cabbage pockets and wild rice delicata
pie and soup and winter greens spicy


and no drama, no appetizers 
life stories and intentions
and dishes washed as we go


the compost buckets filling all our waste
and the oven gas on high
swinging creaking in and out
in and out as the time creaks


and the smells linger in the kitchen 
and we tour and we circle and we hold hands
and we gratitude


and we fill our plates as high as we think they can bleed
with everything tender and fresh
and cooked by you, by me, from my hands to my your plate


no tins


and we sit on the floor and we speak of books
and intuition
and what we think of the days
and the snow


and we eat pie because we cant not
and we play
and have no problem needing to go to bed
and there isnt much to clean


and there are no hospitals
nor tables
and it is the greatest ever.

wooded lev

i have never felt you like today on my cold numb hands
where your traveling branches meet your trunk
the width of your rounds, your wrinkled bark
how a dying leaf feels cool and crackly ridged in my maze
and how the moss is fluff green with life even in this climbing freeze
of rock and of grass you are so unequally dense, distinguished
and then your tree breaks into a warm, coved gap
a haven, ah!
ridges round you are and roots curved, thinning
the ground parts and i smell the forgotten earth scent again
and then as i gather leaves and place my nose in the furry moss at your base there is a sort of horse radish and cool rain in my nostrils.
a tiny bus yellow fungus, formed like i could never misname
and again, spicy dirt
in this silent exploration are my prayers of awe
the unformed words of this glory and beauty grace.
who do i thank if not i for this embrace, this holding
my eyes are closed and yet i absorb every creation in this moment
every bit of that which i am and that which isnt and this meditative connection with the ground with this misted morning is the return of my soul to this place of experience. i can only take these
moments into the unfolding day of doing as a founded yes
a grounded alignment of one

liberation identity

i am: a child of the earth in this moment and can choose where i want to spend my time because i come from a straight success that was destroyed. i could sleep in multiple stars just for one night or with the man rolling his possessions in a cart through the park. i can choose and i am not sure why.

lev

the trees have been winter grey
and the ground crunches in early morning chore
what is still here, what has not fallen and decomposed
is what carries me as i have chosen or have surrendered
still in my mind, unstill is the you that will, the dream that only faith can unfold
the linger of a once truth that drove me to this moment
and i call screaming like a ewe in labor to a nothing
that answers in perceived symbol and assumption
the to be or not so is growing slowly at my walls
as if there is some thing greener at its other
and i hear to listen, i read, i tell and there is noise too much to decipher the whispers

and lying hidden discarded partially
kept in someone elses space
stuff, stuffing, stuffed

nvc

what has the morning brought
again the day, the oranges
the eyes that beg me for a truth
and a belly hungry for yes
and in this well of potential
it is as nothing else ever existed and this is my day
to be everything i ever wanted to be.

my eyes closed i am on the moon
or in your arms
and the day yawns with our music
here we sit like seedlings, flowers
ready to breathe, to rock to cry
to forget and jolt back into the perfection of the dream
we will always wake up from another dream
and pretend to fly until we can remember how
until we soar please plant with me and remind me
and stretch with me to the sun: she gives, she is only to give

and with this heat, the moving making head
we can perform our miracles. like wizards with gems
and swirl the sparks that lie hidden and vibrating
pluck these strings and we will make the sweetest song

let me hear your voice. it comes from the place that i am
and only from here
from the essence space
can we be in the divine, together, dance

all these thoughts to paper. for what?
one is. the tea tells me. the soup does.
and the earth releases from the cracks in my hands.