WHAT DAD MEANT

When dying (exiting his membrane twain tor and dale—that leveling fascia twining his primitive cock’s-crow—the sound of one revisiting jawbones lunging headfirst for the flipped coin that eviscerated him for having felt Its vibe) my father tells me to keep my “bone on til it rots.”

Awaiting havoc and mutiny, I mutely embody my wits with the dead torquing my trace, imposing their paucity, their fetish for the substance of re-collected recollections of re-collecting rational crypt impressions, tacitly proving our lethal ground, melting these seams into demonstrably deadly positions, hemming our mace for mêlée.

When I go native, I’ll let this kneading of peoples’ untilled entrails go, bequeathing that plunder to the lawnsmen—snuffling lucid aficionados of how the heart seems a leaking stalactite, which won’t do at 5:30 a.m.

So, I’ll attack what they love first, letting the time for battle flow. I’ll be like that home-bound virgin spreading her legs wide inviting them to something that just yesterday seemed so far out of reach.

If I flee like a squirrel when they come for me, they’ll never win. Yet if they scatter like squirrels when I come for them, I’ll still come out a head.

That’s what Dad meant…I think.

Adrienne Rich 1929-2012

Passing of a great poet.

New Year's Eve 2008 #2: Chapter 27

Reading a rough draft of Chapter 27 from So It Seams, which was then titled "Germ."

MATRIX

Muddied stars seeking beds
not of our own making, but
hern who brung us—

We cling to her arm
with no future, evaporating.

Unworried, Matrix smiles
wide through saloon doors
swinging open, a special delivery

Of that wine moving us like old dogs
on hot afternoons

Shaded, digging these dancing particles
coming and going, hewing
peculiar, lust-laden odysseys
amid the sun beam in our room
with the sound of clocks winding
down

A tic toc ending
to a day unwound,
yet alarming—

Wearing faces
that no longer conceal our oceans
but reveal them

ORGASM IS NOT A VERB

People seem unpeopled
feeling only aboutness
thoughts about themselves.

For example:
You’ll have a vagina so I’ll talk to you.
I’ll say, “orgasm is not a verb,”
and you’ll say I “need some technique.”

Then,
as postmodern American couples
(circa 1975)
were wont to do,
we’ll work at it (like fondu),
we really will, punching a time clock
for an hour every night
for months, decuntstructing your cliterature,
breaking down our psychosexual geography
how we actually feel about my penis
determining your sexual organism
(not orgasm), beyond its context—
seams a thang that t’aint titself too purty—

Nor’ll it bring this
bored he-dog much joy
‘cause I take my sex slow
and serious, seeing it
(verily, I might add)
as no laughing matter!

“Poor baby, I love you,”
I’ll whisper in your ear, then, dozing
off, hear you crying through my sleep,
which’ll make me cry
in my dream, knowing
we must love one another
or die; yet, we are

New Year's Eve 2008 #1: Reading So It Seams

This is a reading of chapters 24-26 of my novel, So It Seams, recorded on New Year's Eve 2008. The novel was still very much in progress, had a different title, and these chapters were rough drafts. But this evil monk persona seemed to me the best body for the voice to come from, if that makes any sense.

THE WORMS OF LANGUAGE (a love poem)

An unbodied tracelessness
twain being and
speech, where silent
language rests

Mystic slackers
spit words, obscuring
her presence with ink, apparent
octopi

Knowing
madness, freely
disintegrating the random
image of Love, rising

Alone—
without flags, only
the wind and their bearers—
with creative action
emptied of everything

Where a poem seeks a mind absenting itself from Its writing

Becoming that dark vacant matter revealing Its resurrection in words
that somehow embrace everything needed via some magic reversal—

While an insurrection opens your hole for the plug you crave

Forgetting comfort
that trap they set for you alone

Forsaking their pathos, lose
their logical advice,
try your patience
the way a thorn tries the rosebud
producing Its fragrance, animating

Creative prophets who live unattended
where the fires burn out

Yet this candle, elsewhere
flickers, lighting refuge—

The way a fine powder might
scatter over an old plate, knowing

What both worlds offer, seaming
a final, mute point of touch
when names feel

Erased by the worms of language

Ideology of the Germ in Blood Lotus #23

A piece of short fiction, "Ideology of the Germ," from from my forthcoming collection of short fiction called Trust Me (& Other Fictions), has just been published by Blood Lotus Journal. They also have an interview with BlazeVOX[books] publisher Geoffrey Gatza. Check it out:
http://www.bloodlotusjournal.com/2012/03/bl-23.html

Great stuff here from Marcus Wahlbring, Jay O. Yejide, Emily Yates and many more.

I SAID

As usual she can’t find any blood.

There was a big one there. I don’t know where it went.

She had the same problem last time.

This seems to happen a lot.
When you give blood?
No. Just with you.
I’m sorry.
I’m the one who’s sorry for not being able to bleed for you. Next time
I’ll lift weights to pump things up.

She smiles.

Did you drink any water before you came?
Nope.
Drink water before you come next time.
Hokey dokey. Will do.

Blood on her third strike.
It pulsates into her generalized horror
staining her median torpor
pooling on the floor
shaping a bio hazard.

Thanks, I said.

No problem.

She presses her gauze to the spot,
taping down her third bandage
surrounded by hair, still
smiling.

A NUGGET’S FUGUE

The wound plows
a cave, sinking

the fabulous pool of wealth
groping for white

Do you hear the sadness
in what you did
How it crumpled the form

singeing the bloom
off your palm’s resentment
How, like a nugget’s fugue,

it slid on moist pavement
the way a crutch slips

While stars like anthems
deep in your offense
forget me

A Reflection

I seam a visitor’s room
where a passing wakefulness goes—

a word sense of Romeo
Juliet feels in his name—
that sound working
for her, dripping
its essence on her inner
meanings, her
wherefore art thous,

becoming her trans
parent daily agendas torn open by happiness,
a purity of name-action
digging her well, knowing:

Water’s here somewhere, a shape—
some uncreated love unmet—becoming
the heart at the start, mirroring this well we face,

this jar of pouring stones, a reflection

heaping a mother vision that maintains Its echo
in the clench of her voice, her
sound burning an emptiness
more beautiful than life—

Obliterating It to create It—

This blind world squatting—
a beggar in the road,
a great soul hiding
this city of strangers, surrendering—

The fear-language of Its themes cracking open, float away

sorties clearing the tower of its priest—blooming
where stars rise, spinning every night—blown
by a bewildered god, kissing his flute—

Feeling notes that breathe this need, sweeping his floor
deaf to a silence that won’t break.

FUR COBRA

In the blue morning
my mother with Buddha spoons!
Fur cobra, sleeping.

A WHIM FOLLOWED

progress made
unwittingly
induced, no
but deduced away

a whim followed
except for the rule
containing it

NECESSITY

a sister clubs the laptop riot
for fifty bucks
green water invades the lake
walking

where screams silence a future history,
ignoring the guilt of freedom lovers
who lack the mechanisms
for bliss, untouched

by the unborn child they slowly unroll their crumpled unnamable sleep

avoiding the flight of dinosaurs,
bored who become dragons

before dying at the feet of angels
electrifying

flowers that give wing to Pegasus perceiving
the circus of the sky beyond

reach
of terrestrial arms, the bleeding cosmos washing
those feet that are

SCREAMIN’ JAY HAWKINS

Under cloudy skies
blissfully gazing
through the crossroads
to an other time,
Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
put a spell on
my car, driven teary-eyed,
aching
to reveal Itself,
beautifully.