both sides now

Exodus Laughing 2005:



Exodus Laughing 2006:



Exodus Laughing 2007:

lady labyrinth

this is where you slow your beating wings. rest here in the fibrous tunnel of my heart that will protect you from the throbbing world that rises all around like so many streams of blood and hard muscle. crack the wishbone of my mind, close my eyes, and repeat those terrible words that shock my heart open.

but wait - do these walls move? do sudden shifts invade these tunnels like waves? i would be a fool to guarantee any safety here in these cracked channels; clods of hurt fall like earth and kisses drip stinging tears. This heart blooms like a warm flower in the sunlight of your worship, but the hot shock could singe these too-willing petals.

if this lead anywhere, let it be back to ourselves, if we know them or not.


Lotus Hurt by the Cold

How many times, like lotus lilies risen
Upon the surface of a river, there
Have risen floating on my blood the rare
Soft glimmers of my hope escaped from prison.

So I am clothed all over with the light
And sensitive beautiful blossoming of passion;
Till naked for her in the finest fashion
The flowers of all my mud swim into sight.

And then I offer all myself unto
This woman who likes to love me: but she turns
A look of hate upon the flower that burns
To break and pour her out its precious dew.

And slowly all the blossom shuts in pain,
And all the lotus buds of love sink over
To die unopened: when my moon-faced lover,
Kind on the weight of suffering, smiles again.

D.H. Lawrence

sea-change

somebody opened a floodgate in the sky. but my tiny chrysalis sticks firmly tight, seams don't show a hint of bursting. people permeate my skein like particles of needing, and it does nothing to alter the fluid of my being. i fail to understand the se-change, and perhaps won't until i am entirely swallowed by the crisp mouth of creation, then will spout sparks like tiny arrows of misfortune, explode like an car engine under the desert sun, stranded in a place of expansive beauty. perhaps someday i will be able to choose who to let in; for now, it is a free-for-all, a misguided attempt at free love and total abandon. its purifying as an armageddon, required before i terminate entirely into light and art.

lazy posting

alright. here is an draft for a poem i was working on in june. it will find its way into a form at some point.

Pelicano

On our evening beach walk, a pelican
roosts on the lip of the sand bank
carved out by waves's same clutching fingers
that caught his wing and plucked him from the air.

He sits stunned, his wing's joint broken;
a terrible miscalculation.
I hover, an indifferent god, creating tragedy
and feel my spirit harden like the clay desert.

He will not live, you say;
he will be eaten or drown in the sea.
You are listless as the two identical birds
that glide near to observe his riteless passage,

divided by the merciless current
That ferries them to fulfill the line of flight
and leaves him on the bank to drag his snapped wing
and catch his beak on the sand.

The sky that night is brilliant, unfathomable orange and green
we sit close as the fire burns to dust
silenced by the terror of the bird,
his shadow forever wandering the bank.

He torments my sleep, screeches
and tears through the air, spilling bad omens.
We drive South, and the round trip begins to circle us like a noose,
whose tight knot was North.

alone again, naturally

sitting amoung the things i have owned i feel much like a relic myself. i run from inspiration like a lover. i am only concerned now with the surface of objects. i am tracing the outlines, expecting that once i connect all of the disjointed lines, a form will push itself outward and shine brilliantly. dull objects mock me. words are so painfully artificial. i am seeking purity and it continues to sidestep me - it is like chasing firelies whose fickle bodies flash sporadically. reality, unreality, reality, unreality... chasing them is futile so i sit in the rooky wood waiting for them to land and anoint my body in a green fire, then go out.

i soak chard in butter, sip mulled wine on a quiet fog soakd night sucking on half a cigarette, patiently, ardently. i am thinking of all of the birds that flock my yard - where do they sleep? have they found a way to dodge the reality of their environment or do they also sleep with one eye open? are they possibly more real even than i imagine them to be? am i spoiled by this overfertile imagination? perhaps all it does is wrap me up like seaweed in a beautiful ocean drowning ritual. picking off the salt of imagination exposes blank strips of blue sky that gape like breath. i am transfixed and floating in a dawn that is empty, save for the birds that cut across, solid, black thoughts so real i can pierce them with a needle and push them against a blank sheet to keep.

fiddleheadless

The Fiddlehead rejected a batch of poems yesterday:

Dear Ms. H--,

Thank you for your submission. Unfortunately, we are unable to accept any of your poems for publication in our issue. We did enjoy reading them, and our favourite piece was "Three Women."

Kind Regards,
K----

I expected rejection. I didn't expect feedback. Very good. It is interesting that they liked this poem, and didn't mention the one that always receives strong feedback. Maybe I'll wander over to the black stilt tonight to read it.

Three Women

Old photographs evoke
the affinity to death I feel
in graveyards; the mock
of the sunken plots like the sharp,
flat smiles of black
and white mouths.

Like these three women, burned
into sepia tones, translated
from time to eternity.

The one in the center, in white,
with bullet-hole eyes, white
coat, stockings, layers
of gauzy white like the haze
of memory; in her bag she clutches
the secret of a moment, which always lies
somewhere unreachable.

Suspended like petrified fruit,
these women; flattened
by time, like a stone;
three pressed flowers.

The slice of sunlight under their feet
reaches like a scythe, drags them
to this snapshot, their afterlife.

Time clutches at us, from
the world that lies beneath
experience; the inverse of photographs;
your face in the mirror
whose changes no one sees;

You clutch to roots you believe
are branches, turn the world
inside out like the back of a photograph
against a window
in the moonlight.

The fear of becoming memory,
or worse, to slip out of memory
like an accident;
to gather time within
and leave, knowing.

the heart of a broken story

the storm parts to reveal a new season. the days are darker, but the wind is entirely unfettered, a pure violence shaken loose by the summer sun's incision. A wound so clean there is no blood at all - a scrape like a kiss. Aloneness is like going home - rising up to the sky you always imagined you fell from like overripe fruit. now my languid peach flesh hardens green and huddles roots into its stone. its earthy sweetness breeds comfort's growing vine, twisted around days, like so many sharp sticks, only to turn around to creep down over its own shadow. I huddle inside this great anticipation and my voice echos against its shell. I eat candies and read poetry in a white bed, insenced like a shrine. i seek purity, spun some like some fine sugar in an impossible chaotic tangibility for sinking teeth.

summer scraps:

jun 8: the green leaves spin in the tumult of the rain
the air circulates in discomfort
they sob and shake and dance
moving lucidly, pinned to their branches
trying to loosen their clutch to the root
and blindly locate the sun
but the spindle of the air
winds gray round it like
a spider's nest, cottony lightness teeming with black urgency
the oak's green fingers applaud, applaud
clap, soundless, against the air
whispering: down, down, hush
the great roots simmering
the earth heckles and moans

those on the outside are being born
into sunlight like perfect, gold gods
that crystallize, finally, when the sun
stakes their small hearts in a blessing
their glory filters into my dreams
small inside my nested mind

june 12: the house smells of lamb sausages and chanel. i haven't had a drink in 11 days and am feeling remarkably serene.

july 7: my face, the little circle of madness in the window. . . the madness of trying to sort out the madness of the mind.