m, in multiples

at which
faded faded
inquiry response
into solid parameters
fading
over
a fantastic geometry
curled
in a wave of salt
and translation

m, this letter silently
returns a concrete image
(each scene you depict)
(the sound of vision)
listen, to the particles of light
motion a naturalist textbook

the green-blue rainbow
turned in on itself

exercise for today


On my tongue memories of foul snowflakes, in the rain, hair a twisted tangle of oatmeal and butterflies. I tolerate balloons and butterflies in lieu of phone communication or the education of birds, disintegration of every winning lottery ticket. Don’t fake this egg. The axe, my teeth, sharpen safety and watermelon over a meal of marginalia. The mushrooms have grown distant this year. The miasma encircles, lingers, travels far to hold the pieces apart. If you were only as large as a pea, we would have lost your shoes altogether, the leaf a structure of redemption and shelter, your tail flailing for want of a protective cape.

“The poem is the record of the body”

--D.A. Powell

The nuts and bolts of expression

after Mark Levine


henri
your soda your skullcap
fear, unzipping confetti
a parade, spoiling, bleached
an electric quill, a robe, a statue
(a single alp?)

cobblestones and dirt spiral away from plaster
pose held, like a 10 syllable disease
graphite, cardboard, coal all lie flat
on canvas

rings around a grove of thistles
forgetting the machine, uranium, fallout
and the copper voices

the falling vase signals chronic geometry
an acacia dying alone near the marsh

gravel surrounding a nest of resin and clay
under the willow the circuit, magnetic, ceasing

toward

do what you will to organize, plan, predict, claim space and texture as your own-- we will all, each in ways green or scattered across / among consider the lyric, the sense of sound and interior vision, piles over words, a quality of moving music-- of which genre placed multiply factors organized around each green formica coffee flavor-- catch the contents of your stomach before anxiety spills over, reach inside the deep idea or a notion of grey jettisons over each strand of disturbed carpet, justifies its own reckless element-- place, please, words together get words use others' get a dictionary replace text determine a new language-- choose-- translate for/toward a new politic a new season/sense

each

Serena knew G before the catastrophe before the trauma that affected them all. Small and wise, her scent like blueberry lavender lingered before and after her arrival and departure. G before the trauma, she used to say, had curls flowing around her face, skin the flavor of sweet ice in summer. G, once upon a time, painted life-size canvases with her toes, using every color in the spectrum, and then some.

Barth always sang. He wondered about G, and never believed Serena's stories about the hair, but he wanted to believe that once upon a time, G also sang. Lyric pastoral stories put to music. So lovely. So perfect. Barth sang his own part of conversations, and otherwise spoke little, it seemed, as a way to maintain a space, a no-place away from the spoken world. He thought about this for a while apparently, until finally encountering the post-catastophe G, whose entire spacial presence confirmed his notion. And he only sang more.

On a particular afternoon, Barth hummed, G sighed, and Serena recorded each detail of the lawn, on which they sat, in front of the house where no one lived. The long folding blades of grass tickled their calves. The color of the house faded with each note that Barth found to express. Serena asked G if she would decide to paint again soon. G turned toward the old tree at the far end of the yard, turned back toward Serena who watched the face with no expression for only an instant before G got up from the grass, and walked straight into the house whose door pushed back with no more than a gentle groan.

exercise

Those normal clouds, this common air, participate in and are the cause of a surging resistance.--C. Harryman, Gardener of Stars

Trailing along, she bends grass, slithers through weeds, walks over dirt humming change. Pale and unmoving, lemon-scented air past her ears, through eyes, she decides not to become one unknown and trampled, but to march solid, quell fear, and create a determined identity. Each shaded step rings across a spectrum of silent language. Each layer, a body of texture and promise.

strain(ed)

aching individual spokes
sizzle around summer
stakes settled in
unmoving minutes

of shade sparkled
kids on foot
watching bikes

fallen under dirty skin
dust clenching
strokes
the back of a knee

unaided waiting
in dismay
optic nerves
clenched
strive, arch

a new poem on Rewords, after JKD, after Sean S...

flip

if you pick up one penny every 3 minutes
over an hour
you may as well work a job

20/hour

who earns this much
in a day life

20 pennies
pieces
memories

every 3 minutes every footfall gravel step
heads up

karma
or design
works through

each overturned copper
possibility

see Rewords for something... seething...

serious commentary... on the Zohan

Although A.O. Scott gives You Don't Mess with the Zohan a decent review, upon some reflection, the film seems more geared for audiences of the Idiocracy(not the audience that views the film...but the America that the film depicts). At first I though, oh yes, a politically serious-through-stupid-humor film for the mainstream that could, through its pop culture status, have some positive consequences for getting information about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict out into the generic American public ear. But I wonder if this is both too optimistic an assumption of the viewer as well as of the politics of the film itself. The political-commentary-narrative in the film runs through the long-standing conflict with little background info and a lot of "inside" jokes (even in the Detroit metro area, which claims one of the largest Middle Eastern populations outside of the Middle East, many people don't know what hummus is; one character comments that the conflict has been going on for 2000 years now so it should be over soon...) and basically ends in an all-too-Hollywood generic climax of conflict between the two groups (on American soil, the Israelis and Palestinians have businesses across from each other on the same road, the big white-man developers set fires to the businesses to "fuel" hate between the groups); upon realizing the truth hate turns to love and hugs via the clearly announced realization that anyone who looks Middle Eastern is discriminated against by mainstream (white) America. Not unlike in Crash (though admittedly in a much more ridiculous way), we get the message that we shouldn't hate each other because of skin color but that we should all just get along.

And so, do we take it for what it's worth? Sandler clearly has some personal interest in the politics of the issue, and how many people can an Adam Sandler film reach and potentially "affect" with its politics? Or is it not too late to still consider ourselves a small step up the clever ladder from the Idiocracy mainstream and do mess with the Zohan by demanding he give us more: more substance, more creativity, more that goes beyond the same old crotch and sex jokes and still laugh and be held interested.

“I was to conduct an inventory, he says,” the man clearly tilting a little to the left side of near understanding. A boat passed, quietly and loaded with layers of colored boxes, like a steel rainbow of fruit flavors. Each color representing a particular type of potential luck or good energy as it passed across the water moved further from solid ground. Counting each color, starting over once, twice, a final time getting through the collection in its entirety, he scribbled in his book and mumbled the prayers that he claimed accompanied each fortuitously shaded square. We watched together, the details melting into what we imagined to have been pure possibility, floating away from foundation, spreading on the air.

try unequal-librium on Rewords

Raucous #1

after reading some Kevin Young poems

the streets are curtains
skin chalk
dead hurt

whether pockets season or
stretch gin

acrylic drawers repeal
hurt skin
pigeons
a flat moon

frame vinyl, bop black
scrawl captivates the blaring
light
dead sheets painted

feminist critique anyone?

I witnessed this for real in Louisville...walking down the street suddenly there were millions of pre-teen girls swarming in anticipation of a Jonas Brothers event of some kind...

a new poem on rewords: after after a train passing

the only explanation

I did it because the light was leaning heavy over the horizon at a particular moment of humidity and sweat. The air was like butterscotch candy freshly licked, wet, sticky then spit out -- it's scent clinging to my skin. A constant crackling echoed across the lawn like heat breaking into pieces, firecrackers across the sky.

She leaped across the fence as if we were related, and came at me fast and furious, until I couldn't recognize her at all anymore. The leaves shimmered violently against the wall and it was only then that I felt every detail of my former life as a vision in front of me. And although she had encouraged me to take the trail to the left, it is true, she never promised the appropriate, or even desirable, outcome of my travels. In retrospect, I would have preferred to accumulate enough financial stability to have avoided the entire incident altogether.

I did it because at that moment, standing over the pool table, each striped ball angled in an awkward direction, I knew there would be no hope of ever winning or losing another game. I did it because his breath, against my back, salty and fresh, like the ocean, charged with electricity and the scent of lime.

recall that there was a moment
visual
of taste and sensation (bile basil mint)
(re)constructed via detail (figurative analogy)
a story not told
without characters
the design of violence on the surface of a shirt
a rainbow pierced by hail
atomic or over-fed synchronic events
seen at an angle
on the surface of a wing passing unnoticed
over the face of every ticking second