five years of stories, mostly lies

and as the note I wrote to myself (I leave notes for myself, so I don't forget to remember) says: mix truth with fiction, real with imaginary, to explain why I am here.

Here, There

The small bead pressed against the mound of her clitoris. He rolled the smooth and round ball over the tightening vessel. She broke against him, loosened from her body one fraction before she retracts; as a wave onto the shore, the edges of her being fell over his in an awakening; that forgetfulness of form carried them onto the sofa.

"As one drop this rain fed the root of my spine, and I, now more awaken, more livened, can step further from the bough and harbor my scent in a bottle."

"It will crash through walls and shake the sky. There is little to contain if not the wind of our minds, this breath already passes."

"Oh, union of senses! The breath inhabits none, the breath inhabits all: it is no more a limiter of time than that of the iron in our blood."

"Push onward now and return to the base sense of mortality, this is nothing, the invisible world of void and shadow dreams too far from this field I hold you, too, as the night moves perpendicular to day."

"Loneliness presses people, solitude taunts their substance; there, that the temptation for contact, charges them headlong to live in boxes with strangers."

"Friction creates heat and the bodies too closely packed flair personalities and discourage calm thorough thought."

"Feet on the sidewalk deafen the canals of ears and the heart beats too close to the throat."

"When nervous I feel the pulse in my sternal notch, it calms me, to know that my heart beats when my mind detaches and searches outside the room for respite. With the first two fingers of my right hand I count the push against my fingers."

"The sense in the fingers is not of the organ, nor the organ of the fingers, but that which is perceived lies in their union."

"My soul lifts and before making its journey across the firmament it moves between the mist and between clouds."

"I press a small bead against the raising notch of your clitoris as the first two fingers of your right hand touch the base of your throat and you shutter against me."

Dead Opossum

Wishes granted today

The horse and I walk down to his meadow and stop to watch a large turkey vulture tipping its wings on a thermal
before circling in and down and landing on the electric fence
slipping to the ground and sunning its huge wings in the paddock and then just as quickly up to nearby fir

I take the horse to the paddock and as we walk I see what the buzzard is eyeing
Opossum, freshly dead in the hogs-fuel arena
a thin grin of pointed teeth show around the still pink gums

I wince over its death and leave the horse to graze
Walking up the hill, I turn back and notice that the vulture has now landed on the carcass
Settling into the grass I watch from hundreds of yards away wishing I had binoculars

I walk closer and sit in the shadow of an alder
Far enough away to leave the scavenger to its feast
Close enough to have a view of the process

The first bird rips the belly open
and I imagine that the smell of fresh carrion is pulled up the thermals
two more birds join the event
one lands in the fir, the other chases off the first bird who joins the second bird in the fir

Two juveniles circle above and express their interest but make no attempts at a meal

The first bird opens its wings in the fir tree, stretches from wingtip to wingtip
and the wings must say something to the other birds about being huge and strong
because the juveniles fly off in search of an easier meal.

This commotion of stretched wings
and the masculine display of feathers
is too much for the female sharing the fir
she flies across the valley and takes refuge behind the mottled shade of an oak

The first bird, alone again in the fir
Swoops down to god's table
and the other bird does not fly off but steps back
as the female soars down and lands on the opossum spine

Her mate keeps the competition at bay as she gorges on intestines, fascia, organs
She shares scraps with her companion

All of this I watch for hours, until there is nothing left, not even bones
and all I can think of is the poem by Robinson Jeffers,

Vulture:

I had walked since dawn and lay down to rest on a bare hillside
Above the ocean. I saw through half-shut eyelids a vulture wheeling high up in heaven,
And presently it passed again, but lower and nearer, its orbit narrowing, I understood then
That I was under inspection. I lay death-still and heard the flight-feathers
Whistle above me and make their circle and come nearer.
I could see the naked red head between the great wings
Bear downward staring. I said, “My dear bird, we are wasting time here.
These old bones will still work; they are not for you.” But how beautiful he looked, gliding down
On those great sails; how beautiful he looked, veering away in the sea-light over the precipice. I tell you solemnly
That I was sorry to have disappointed him.
To be eaten by that beak and become part of him, to share those wings and those eyes–
What a sublime end of one’s body, what an enskyment; what a life after death.

tell me more

I lose myself and the questions at the forefront of my mind which go unasked; I, too, lose thoughts and words that I imagined saved yet skip from the peripheries into the abyss of thoughts not-to-be-remembered; the quick shift of a key those words, thought safe, return to the sea of mind from which they sprang: Little lost, nothing found.

Tell me, tell me all that can be unspoken

Poets, who speak clearly with less

I am on a rampage: Tearing through anthologies, looking for a poet who says what is in my heart; if they say it, I won't have to expose my bones and I can pick over theirs.

Scavenger, that is me.

My arm tastes like minerals, raspberries, dust, sunscreen; I squint against the backs of my eyes and catch the sun's orb silhouetted against the lids.

The horse moves over the July grass in search of clover and shade. I sit astride holding a thin piece of rope that attaches to the leather of his halter. Sweating his hair mats and sticks to my bare legs. I wait, he eats, clouds and birds roll across our horizon

Hot in the Vein

My stomach shifts in my midsection and I cannot tell if it is dread or disease as I stare at the online application page for a new credit card. Dread. I close the browser. I will not go there, yet, but fucking close; the distant walls are ever changing.



Paper, pencils

Collect cobwebs.

Shearing time

Peals waken

Rending

Moments ripen

Split

Join anew

Eating Crow

Well if I was a carnivore, crow would be the last thing I would eat because those highly intelligent birds would stalk me all over the city and my life would spiral out of control.

That being said I am making a horizontal list right here (colon) rip every single thing out of my room and then put it back in a nice way (semi-colon) keep it all together (semi-colon) keep waking up before six for the rest of my life (semi-colon) find something that makes sense of all of this confusion (semi-colon) learn how to identify the questions before trying to answer it.

Living life through a fractured lense (and yes, I checked, it is okay to have an e on lens, it's better that way, for me, more clear and really what else matters?) takes a toll. I am looking forward to being able to focus and direct my energy toward a specific target, in the mean time, I hope to find ways to express how truly grateful I am for this human experience. It seems that more wildly unpredictable it becomes, the more the steel fibers in my heart soften, the deeper the sorrow the greater the joy. When I find a way to describe that everyday, I will be getting closer to asking the right questions

June is more than summer

This tide is momentous and perhaps at some point the high will match this low. As this year progresses, I learn that there is no way of knowing or holding onto water or sand, I work to flow out and disperse into the greater waters of the ocean. I fantasize about floods, their hunger for low laying lands and trailers. Floods are things of beauty which cannot be suppressed. Fire, in its consumption of all things which leaves only charcoal ash soot, shoots fear to my bones. Fire is individual, a flood is bad luck and low lands.

So this tide that carries me, I drift on it.

I lose my second job of the year, the third of my life, this is not a year for having jobs if you are me and I am, so I don't have jobs. Again, fine, and better still, because the sucking of marrow from the inside of my bones to deliver it into the waiting maws of man ends.

So catch my breath, find a minute, breath deeply, and wonder about all of this.

standing in the dark

Every few months my sleep health goes to hell and my days turn into endless streams of lost moments and missed opportunities. I wake drenched in sweat, legs trapped in my sheets having forgotten my name and hoping that the stranger in the bed next to me doesn't mind my nakedness. Heart in my throat, my eyes search the dark room for clues, until slowly I come back into my body which has been sleeping in the same bed next to the same stranger for years.

I push pull my mind now. I heard a quote from a famous man whom I will not attribute as I have no desire to fact check and the last time I failed to fact checked I got checked publicly for not doing my research: "When your dreams turn to dust it is time to vacuum."

It is father's day. I love you.

unwashed vs prewash*td

Time in all its glory follows the sun. It is no small act of truth that time in all of its implications is uniquely personal. My time is marvelously slow and as minutes linger under the beading rim of a glass, I know my skin over bones hides more than it reveals.

There exist one pair of cut-off levi's, faded, almost white, loose around the pockets and thighs; one black tshirt with printing, including, and, yet not limited to the search for Carmen San Diego, a graphic, and a streak of turquoise oil paint; one gray graphic tshirt which can never be washed, a sliver ghost to hang smock like over my torso; one pink and yellow tie-dye, worn down to sheer threads: That is love.

Time is in those clothes. Their folds hold the soft scent summers past, long warm nights that dipped into the mind of a tomorrow that has never unfolded. These shirts are crickets and roller skates and speed and the rolling years, years of ambiguity, there is moon in the fibers and sun too, and when I wash them all of that gets a little further from my fingers and my eyes see less and heaven knows I remember much less than I hoped.