give your hands
february 1 2024
you feel time taking off again
and you forget, time taken off,
how gravity’s got its own grammar,
tenses and particles— the flatness
of your feet’s because gravity, you only
have to stretch your hands above your head
because gravity’s broadway junctions. you
forget all that! the shaman in the
stadium did okay, you feel, you
carried your anthem like a casket, climbing
inside was your rehearsal, your practice.
you less than three juno, the
harbinger of you, you’ve been
a most colorful instrument, glissing
through your hair like, like only you know—
you’ve got to get all these knots untied
in the esses and aches and the indexing
of your lips by your gravity-defying. just be
real, be modernistic, just admit
your only real meditations aren’t—
because you can’t bear that weight
like the rest of you dabbling brooklyn
hollow-point racewalkers on your
way to the gravestones for a picnic
and severed feathers falling up the
east river because you’ve got your next
pair of eyes fixed on some new synthesis.
the mix
june 30 2022
this you gave is to me
open skies and open windows,
a child in a museum pulls
headphones on to
cool gusts of air, else
pulling a door with all might,
welcome wind!
this is a smirk, side-eyes
from friends perched in trees:
“pushhhhh me up over this branch,”
and longer visions
of the ocean, all
within this a song
you gave to me
tang
may 3 2022
Small whisperings drawn
from soul
and soul from bone,
fallings-down for me.
Sip this soul for
mothers’ callings,
the hot stone and long fall;
in answer.
Salt this soul, blinding powder;
onion-green tang of life,
union of stone and water
and soul, and long (fallings), and tang.
Whisper from bone,
marrow, answer of life,
and from small soul,
union for me.
stylish
october 23 2022
“what does it mean?” always sounds like “who are you” to me, like, why does it even matter, like, i might tell you where the things that make up what i think might be my self come from, but
that’s not me, really, all i have is me, everything then could be me, the question i might be able to answer is “what is you” because “who are you” is all wrapped up in meanings i like about myself, it’s dripping in all these viscous ninth chords, good-looking photos and whatnot; me is beautiful, that’s probably the only.
a person i admire says “it’s good for people to be confronted with abstraction!” i agree but further, i think you need abstraction to keep out of hell.
“what does it mean” with a scratched head, “why does it need to mean?” these days i always want to shout it. meanings are death-descent by way of simplicity, not a watering-down of it but a freezing-over. i don’t even want to admit that ice can relieve, it always hurts my stomach too
two two two
three three
you see a dark split in the road ahead, and you
can’t tell if there’s two paths
or three, meaning to tell you
There’s a difference between what’s Abstract and what’s Confusing. Abstracts are full of beautiful Confusions, and Confusions are zoomed-all-the-way-out Abstract. Don’t get it confused, get it abstract.
That’s not an abstract way of doing things, I confess, I abstain from your confusions, so help me God.
New Religion Idea #1: I’ve never told anyone to leave me the hell alone but I’d like to soon.
That’s because there’s anger that comes with me. People say they’re scared of me, that’s because I’m mean! See that’s the only kind of mean that you can be, the other is the kind that you do.
four four! what’s the point?
style over substance, how about
the substance was always the style
you turned up your nose at that
and the way you did it was
stylish, i liked it
Meaning is doing, then I think. God himself has been telling people to say that faith without works is dead, I agree even further that it’s death. When I say “it doesn’t mean anything” I’m met with anger, the anger of faith-apart-from-works, like the works somehow were never the faith in the first place.
i go down the path of meaning less necessary than doing, because it’s the gnarly, unclear one in the middle that doesn’t lead to hell.
tearing up
january 4 2024
i beg myself listen at the height of it all the ripping
starlight stifled in motion crackling of being
stretched out and petrified and
chiseled away at the bells tolling as i put on
the coat a crescendo of rolling wind buffeting
the face the warm gray blue rainfall draining deeply
into the ears cries thundering through the
storm’s veil the symphonicacophony of stillness the patterning
drops hitting the drum crackles and pops the
flames enveloping the neck of the woods i’m from
the lie behind flutters blossoming on the elm
summary
june 16 2023
She longed to be his Milky Way—
his magnificent vanishing
radiant murky smear
of purple’s massive shimmer
He longed to be her maple tree—
adorning her doorway,
dying slow in
her yard’s lilting sunlight
madly you love
january 31 2024
it’s like when that sharp knocking of
the hungry sky catches me against myself.
me and myself and i’m misfiring deeply, like
when i’m finding i’ve missed the bridge on
the quickest way to harlem. pardon
my inverse gardening up on that sugar hill
i crush before funneling and shaking up simple,
like when that flirtatious
twist falls on the rocks all
gnarly.
me myself and i’m on the warpath, i’m
like seven past par on wrath,
there’s ghosts tacked to the green
with arms crossed like how much
everything is up in your sound? like when
the people know how
churchy it’s going to get.
good god i breathe sometimes, and resistance
is flicking the sustain pedal
with my toe and
plunging the
last chord of summertime into blood,
like when dah de dah de lah de dah says the
vanguard all seismic and
i’m like can’t i tell em goodnight?
brooklyn says
january 31 2024
shade by shadow by shade the clouds translate poems
and the puppeteer moves his hands to rest on his head
and the channel opens wide her jaw to swallow the library
and the gleaming 8-ball sinks into the maw of the train tunnel
and the jet-gray windows fog and fade into light blue
and the puppeteer paints a line of tears down her face
and the music trills emptily in the left ears of the lovers
and the mice whisper to their ancestors in the lowest corners
and the grass radiates hot and damp and tangy light
and the brittle decayed history books blink into fresh fiction
and the car seats tremble at the shifting weight of the ritual
and the puppeteer leaves the string on his left hand trailing
and the koi fish jump off the vases and arms and into the river
and the leaves churn in a fiery dance across the pavement
and the looking glass turns over and over and over again
and the puppeteer tilts her little head onto his little shoulder
and the pelicans sing until they drop out of the heavens
driving music
august 3 2023
i’m around and
up against the
lights out in
the stadium see
twirling round the
marked field knives
out for it’s
just me up
there jaws stretched
open for the
kill the idea
of me defined
by action i’m
not defined at
all the things
i’m all about
beauty fades at
the stadium lights
go out therein
lies the advance
all eyes closed
you went all
yesterday on me
and you the
only one too
many silk sheets
cover my windowed
face the stands
flooded over hand
over hand full
of incense and
oil i’m your
anointment i’m your
knives i’m an
epic meditation on
feeling shadows give
titles to feelings
in silent tongues
out to catch
the rain that
lurks through the
break me i’m
singing and drumming
pulsing softly at
the foot of
the stairs lead
to the prayer
room for none
my shadow’s inherited
reciprocal ghost on
the wall sunlight
caught in elbow
flying from now
we’re even lover
how to sing in your room
may 9 2023
Step 1: Cry
When tears begin, watch closely in a
full-body mirror:
they roll off the face amber and viscous,
mid-air they shine, like
sky-blue neon in midnight’s inkwell,
by the time they hit
the wooden floor, thud —
they are solid jade. Watch closely, listen,
breathe shallow.
Step 2: Dance
Reach into the mirror, gather
the smallest jade pieces in your
weaker hand (they are not felt or
seen outside the mirror).
Held loosely, they must be spun, shaken,
cascaded,
until, caught, by the rip-current shhhhhh,
the feet lift off the floor, the full-body,
pulsing in waves, begins to forget,
what up and down are.
Step 3: Fly
This sensation has a name: mmmmmm,
which is a signal to you,
that to float
now is to hum:
a forward pull through the air
and a simultaneous casting of
a shimmering purple glow that emanates
from your throat.
You must now move freely.
Step 4: Gather
You see in the
purple shimmering a
manifold multitude of words:
the languages of your mothers, they
POP in and out of corporal form.
Your hands and mouth
are a net —
be quick in collecting,
be ready for the weight, these words
shimmer because they are leaden.
Step 5: Speak
All is still now
inside the inkwell
your neon tear once occupied;
listen again closely —
there is nothing left to hear,
nowhere left to hum. Hollow,
you are prior to yourself.
Form your lips into an O,
you may dare to make a noise.
it's your party
july 11 2022
Some words lurk behind clouds listening.
You allow this: you want it, you shaped it!
This is two moments all at once, and at a moment’s
notice things mutate; instant forever.
Don’t wait, you’ve never felt this way!
Look to the sun for permission, there are
no answers in this moonlight, if you sit on that
tree any longer you’ll never become it.
See: you’ve tried this nothing before.
You are surely capable of moving in cascades,
and your thoughts are already a net, for the
organization of flowing water. Remember times
deeper down, and deeper out: your lovers
had smiles carved in purple neon,
eyes brewing dreamless shadows, your hands
touched theirs and became like ice.
What was it you learned, then, you standing
silently between social rows of string lights?
The words behind the clouds laughed
at your lovers, and you only heard wind and rain.
You may now accept that there are no musts, that
you may become a practitioner of
exhaling without inhaling, that you may
allow this pretending to mutate into becoming,
or not. This tree you sat on still grows, in every
direction. Sideways is forward, outward is upward:
This is a conflict of you, it’s your party, it’s
your mind’s reason for.
pitch
september 3 2023
I feel it like this — like big drops off the leaves — amen —
like air — vicious — ripping down my bones — amen —
I feel it like the tang of highway fumes — the flashing
tongue of the siren — amen — colors — brutally sweet
and sticky all boiled down — amen — I feel it like
eager tapping on the wheel — like head-in-hands all
the way across the street — ten thousand windowed worlds —
like languages lost — I feel it — like one way — amen —
the other way — like overripe — like an acute angle —
an interruption of the 99th repetition of the mantra —
amen — I feel it like flowing — like gray skies flexing around
a question — inhaling through an answer — amen — like
malicious static buzz — like a collapse — like a cataract — like
an eclipse — I feel it like rising crackling heat on my neck —
like holding out the last exhale — lingering staleness — a stern
voice inside — amen — like scales embedded in the pavement —
perilous finger wags — head shakes — like a collage of faces —
like chimes — like old dead hope — amen — I feel it like that .