due to possible rhyming, meter, and the unfortunate taboos associated with classical poetry, two of nathan's most recent poems have been deleted. Some of the poems published below (as noted) were written by J Z Wyckoff of San Francisco, CA. He can be contacted in your home or certain designated places.

"only savage volumes of distillate sun can animate machines" - JZ Wyckoff

an inspired response to JZW:

volumnous savagery, distills bitter like clear water and grain,
like time passing through memory, puckering aspirations,
tightening the walls of your mouth in an attempt at forgetting.
respirations float listess in mists that dawn through valleys,
towers towing grains atop ridges.

distilled by mornings, repeated, we become savages.
we are running so softly as our bodies stay put,
the world turning in busy, crowded, lingual streets beneath our scurrying feet.
all of it turning together in opposites and crumbling,
rotating in time along the still axes of a silent sip of coffee.
or a moment where the leaves move as if forever and you remember.
our savage bodies remember. our members membering again,
reorganizing limbs in a hurry to catch the weather
as she removes our clothes, cell by cell,
withering membranes like couplings and rubber seals.
re-membering. reorganizing limbs, and always having parts left over,
wondering where we went wrong,
sitting in a circle of fingers and bones and throws and tempers that we know,
that we wish were not ours.

and in our desiring sweat, we remain savage,
we re-member ourselves incompletely,
losing days to lovers and windows and cigarettes
and there is no light like still california light coming through windows,
turning on walls during any season. on any afternoon.
you might not've forgotten.
any other day than this one, i have been chasing. chasing shadows.
her shadows, run across continents and terrain and i trail the day,
tripping on skyscrapers and trains, on books and looks and comments
and the attitudes of lovers.
dwelling in corners of memory and inertia which bruises me into existence
into weathering and wearing my soiled soot covered suits into the rain.
only to dig through sun filled days in piles of ash,
digging for a golden orb that hangs overhead,
digging for grains of sand too small not to run through my fingers like blood,
grains of sand distilled of golden orbs which run through my fingers which dig for golden orbs.
Blood which pounds mortar through heaven in waves of reds and blues.
through pergatorial trials and subterrainian verdicts.
wandering through a caverous maze of revolutions
which orbit a river.
on which i am a raft.
which is standing still./

=

JZ Wyckoff sent me in an email:

"
You are like a stranger to me.
You are all like strangers. And all we should have
some rules perhaps
a game. something to
keep the words making sense.
to keep the pictures from
drifting to the windows.
But alas we have none. _ Nate T. Chien



You are like a stranger to me.
You are like all strangers.
Abide by the rules that strangers do
and we can walk away safely.
Fresh as the thinking of the smoke
which watches worlds burn.
You have in your mouth the explosion which
started time, in your mouth
the Kalevala which spawned
independence from Russia.
There are poems for these things
already on their way down my arms.
Strangers on their way down strangers arms.
And still you give under my hands
like ash in a circle of stones
after a fire.
Still you take seared skin with you.
Strangers are burning there, molting
their pasts into the air like dawn
throws its world
into the sun fresh as
walking away from one another
whispering to our lit selves
wondering what would happen
if we worlds collided again.



Here’s another lil some some,
[also a JZ Wyckoff pome]


So many of our careening
fouls away from love
still clutch at the wind to bear them up
the same way that love did.

So many faces pull the same muscles
back
as love did.

Rifling our bodies for feeling,
for some thermal air to be prized,

we have been giving to truth
what truth cannot return:
a mimicry,
an imitation quiet

which incarcerates our tongues in its deaf maze,
oiling each other’s sucked thighs for
proxy sensation,

for the mock vision of
passion and excess,

at the embarkation where
our ribald hands
revel like gulls.


Perhaps time is just a truant phase of
mankind.

A phase balanced by the parody
of our acts against skins.

We have found
only bare wooden armature
for bodies there.

Only peals of faces
atop dead things.

But the way we choose,
has its definitive unchoosing.

The way we repel,
its narrow reverse.


Foul of love, there is only gravity,
and sable skirmish.

Foul of time, there is only sentiment
thoughtless-
without the joy of thighs
in our devouring hands.


To thrive in both,
we need no arbitration,

no veritable proof
to justify ourselves
in the throes of our bodied havoc.

Only savage volumes
of distillate sun
can animate
machines.

Only fingers of empathy
can begin us.

Hurling merely our bodies
into the wilds of other bodies
is short-lived arson.

Stoking the fields of our histories
into its fire
is familiar suicide.

But grace harbors its child in the logic of acquittal
of ourselves
from such judicious memory,

wherein time is only truant from what
died inside us
when foul wind had us fooled.
"


---------------
I responded to him thus:



Only savage volumes
of distillate sun
can animate
machines.

-the tones of bones



So many bodies.
massive sacks
frail, lucid flesh

bare-ly

narrow-ly erect
sweating through burlap

in shadows of leave.

hiding a small furnace
in your leather hands

sweating ash into a dream
in vtero.

Careless boy!
you’ve tied my tongue!

though May may come
here still I’ll stand

my hands adrift

in ashes
the furnace tried to corner

but I slept! (Careless boy)

through ashen stones I lept.
my laughter
pealing of my face

sleeping soundly
in furnaces of soft lovely mournings

atop dead things I rest.
like all of time a stranger

open foot hatch_
run like river.
mine for embankments
of waking

Careless boy!
sit not atop dead things that rest not
peal square muscles from
your burlap frame!

wring the ashes from your face
and take the stones from behind your teeth…
they are looking at me
blankly staring.

speaking of thermal volume

voluminous opus of silence in stone.

yet uncarved.




=======

stop.

tear my sleeve-cloud
erupt speechless noises
scatter birds from the corner.
clutch breaker in the heavy night

sitting at the wall
leaning into nothing
another one figured out
I have not been home in ages

her call is ongoing simple
a lone long whistle
soft and round
sharp end

cutter stampeding numb vision
torso exposed in the weather
trying. now get to sleep
sew it back together.

begin.


--

why are you so gentle?
who are you talking to in the evenings?
Are you getting used to it?
It seems like its growing on you,
but where are we?
I haven’t yet come out here.
I feel like I am too something.

I miss you. don’t you know.
I am missing your familiar like
will they know me when I get back?
I guess there are a few.
cranes in the night flying for your cotton bags.
holding on to the handles,
careening into lakes with televisions and
teacup saucers. bowl of candies and trinkets.
losing out the night for your time well spent.

come back into the light here so I can look at you.
the backs of the cartons are still reading like science fiction.
your bulbs are hanging from light sockets. passive.
you lost and you missed it while the wheel turned outside your window.
you cried out for the glass to break and the room turned out empty.
inside out anyway. look here into my eyes while the night is young.
but I guess if we cant share then we can always play for quarters.

--

From a dream 08 oct 06

Goliath inspired
the goldfish
In shades of
Three of Two
Of One of Ether
When I left Sudafrika
The Dutch Skull fucked her
with grass underfoot

They marched away laughing
boys of the princely team
Marauding.
Masquerading as men
of the Letter.
sticking around
in the corners they had left.

--

from a flu:


stomach
colonic
sour month of august
slacking repair
chain of rags ingested
torn words imbibe
last night of season
tower in the dusk of morn

stipend machinist
lost dog in metal yards
grieve for your health
she ran away
forgotten


--


I haven’t the slightest idea.
You are like a stranger to me.
You are all like strangers. And all we should have
some rules perhaps
a game. something to
keep the words making sense.
to keep the pictures from
drifting to the windows.
But alas we have none.
Your picturesque mind hair is moving in the sunlight.
I can see your face through these glasses but it doesn’t look like you.
You look like my brother used to look
when I woke up from dreaming
Sleeping in the morning with a softness in his stillness.


--

The southern tip of the Great African Continent

somehow I cannot walk around
without grinning through my Big White Glasses.

The sky is like the eyes of a giant.
welding fear with the vast agony of history

tearing magic from the hands of children.
speaking the names of all passed in the hands of...

US

call it what you want
it is the way of the world.
careless mishappen, in stains and rags.

most beautiful triumph, in subtle privacy.

our lazy words wreak mallice and law.
devilish sword seeks supple piracy

truant worker.
patron saint.

tower.

trade magesty for the static ritual of loss.
lay waiting in hills thrown together by wind and her

thick pouring sisters in the sub stance of days.
walk through streets littered withllen/ birds nests and fa

--

there is a doorstep
chilling distant cradle in the midst of ashes
coursing blood the Only Sound

watchtower creak
the hand is touching
blind, and absent stone

the bird, though dead
has eyes awake,
her beak is cought in prose

so years between
new taylored clothes
the heart still knows to speak

into it spill the long recourse
her tempered death awaits


one thousand days
no measured weeks
the weather comes in droves.


--

What will it take to get you out of the house?
Come on out now, step out of your house.
Step into the yard, into the street. Step into your
Bitter creation. What will it take, my lonely?
Costumed friend. When will you finally move from your seat,
From your inevitable ashes?
When stars rain down and the dark trumpet sounds,
Will you remain behind your door, guarding your old, heavy cans?
When the day is night with the long eclipse,
Will your hands still clutch your stick?
Will you see that it has scales, that it lives?
When serpents are at your door, will you then awake?
Or must your house be burned again by quiet soldiers,
And built again by lovers who love to speak?
alas.
No trumpet will sound; no stars will rain.
Day and night remain distinct; Serpents rest in their hearts and fields.
And soldiers work in silence night and day.


---

there is a dark breeze blowing through a room with no walls.
there is a swinging door alone in the empty night.
there is a silent river rushing. all of the rafts are standing still.
her body has one thousand surfaces and only one is visible.
i have been here one thousand times before.
i will be here one thousand times again.
you will only see me once.