The road on the riverbed is full of flutter.........

“If time is my vessel
then learning to love might be my way back to sea…”
--interpol, “public pervert”

"Out of the dimness opposite equals advance . . . . Always substance and increase,
Always a knit of identity . . . . always distinction . . . . always a breed of life.
To elaborate is no avail . . . . Learned and unlearned feel that it is so.

Sure as the most certain sure . . . .
plumb in the uprights, well entretied, braced in the beams,
Stout as a horse, affectionate, haughty, electrical,
I and this mystery here we stand."
--walt whitman


INFINITY INSIDE THE HEART

We have to drive down there to get there first of all, but it’s not like other trips where egos take the wheel, all of us just got in the one car and that was it, there was one of us, one car full of us, but a truckload of faith to think for one’s self and not for the each of us, and all the faith in the world that it was going to work.

***
I have always been more than happy to take a step backwards.

***
The real story is that nothing ever happens when everything happens. Even writing it down is not a real clue: why live in the past?

Looking forward, there’s never an excuse to feel anything but holy.

***
Constantly judo is practiced on and over your body. Can you still tell me how the whole wheat works?

***
The lounge of spirits, the opposite of calcium, opposite of decay, five discrete elements in a row.

The edge of sandstone where it draws a line between the air and the rocks below.

Everything that we want is there.

***
The girls were joined at their given ribs so none of them could balk.

***
I’d forgotten about Anubis, the He Who On His Mountain, the He Who Pours the Fluids. Busy keeping all the other vultures at bay. Who am I to remember death? The births have been enchanted and innumerable.

Try to picture this: a somewhat threadbare jackal carrying you into the kennel. The other dogs refuse to recognize their dogness. We all die anyway.

***
Everything that we want is there. So why can’t we talk about it?

***
Everything that we want is there. Why can’t we say what’s on the menu?

***
Everything that we want is there.

So why aren’t we just eating it?

***
Did you see the flutterby fluttering by?

Did you?

***
Everything we want is in this place. Look at everyone else just shopping around.

***
Everything we want is in this place. How could you be unhappy here?

Vulnerability is one road to the open heart.

The knife is another.

***
Everything within the breadth of humanity, nothing in waste or holding, nothing resigned.

How many of us are dancing and how many of us are actually sitting to watch us?

***
The soft before the shoe, the aphasia of water against the coral floor. I know it isn’t really coral, but what the fuck?

The soft before the shoe, the aphasia of water against the coral floor, if there’s any coral there, at all, even after all of this.

Where were we before?

***
Water against the cord.

Did you see the flutterby fly by?

***
Better to see you with than in a million leers.

Instead of the Hydra, all the eunuchs surprise each other with guns and toughtalk. They want to explode, no the company of a fat man in a headdress and yes is everyone in love saying goodbye.

Instead of just a thing to say, three moons, Jupiter and Scorpio. The point of the tail is the very best part.

***
Di ou s e t fl tt b fl y?

Ones on the waswith,
Surpreme. Dvne.

Cntxt, Rcntxt, 8 8 8.

Hngr.

***
May you never hunger.

May you never thirst.

You are mostly water anyway.

***
Infinity inside the heart.

***
DO WHAT THOU WILT: a riddle no longer.

When I get hungry I feed on my hunger.

***
Decisiveness your virtue, make endless choices.

***
I claim the hawk and his ability to perfectly impersonate the hawk-god.

I claim the way he clips the autumn leaves with his puckered wingbones and his brushedback feathers.

The feathers themselves are faultless. They are in the air and they don’t fly.

Look closer: I claim their lack of silence. I do not claim the churls of wind around them.

***
Did you see the flutterby fluttering by?

Flutterby, flutterby, what’s yr. excuse?

***
Destiny coated on turbulent sucks,
The folding mage of the will.
Hands a pockets.

***
Bear hug in thought.

***
Blue smoke foaming upward, purpling the leaves of the trees on the long way up, the pecking of water on the river rocks, the poison oak soft as a blister, red as a shoe.

There is a sound that everyone makes eventually which is the same sound as the one before it.

***
The rules don’t allow for mistakes.

Keep all hands in. Enjoy yourself.

The mirror of copulation.

***
Same on the sand as in the air, the stars follow Jupiter, crusts and burned love-knots.

Someone tries to tell me the goat is not a real god. Fuck that.

Christmas on Earth, we take whatever we want, but only give with greater clarity.

Charms of deep suppression, cavities and angel food, angel caves, miracles of salt. Canteens of salt.

Imagine a day with nerves.

Everyone has a skin once about a Christmas that sucked. After the first unreal city, what are all the others? Fish without scales? Heads without arms?

***
The door is a jar.

***
The way you look at both of us:
Acorns dash the snow.

Does anybody know where the field fence is?

Isn’t it not snowing in here?
What can I show you?

***
Fl tt rb , flu er y, waswith th ppl s & t e r ng s

a lever lowely pisces

ock

***
Anubis wants to fight with Khufu! How’d you hear about that?

Deep, dark whispers in the night. Scarred simplicity.

Maybe he’s got a gun.

How dare you call it a gun. We got the kids and childrens here. Shut the fuck up.

Who the hell is Anubis?

He’s got the stuff.

Well that’s the thing.

***
That’s so cute.

What?

You say “Yay!” when you wake up.

***



ock colo rs

resinotor anywaswith

melting

***
Is any of this NOT done on purpose?

I do exactly what I want.

I am the whole of the Law.

I am two mirrors, each looking at the other.

***
You’re a sandwich?

Only when there’s bread.

***
Ping of recognition. “Did you see the flutterby flying by?”

I walked crossingways over the rock on the path. Marta and Rich not far behind, or far in front, and they walked another way. Walkie-talkies in the soul. Cold conch a street light. Another ping.

Not really.

Thru the apple green, a platypus rock. A tortoise shell floor, and streams of sweat. It’s warm here, everything inside the heart.

Did I see the flutterby fluttering by? The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. Golden apples of the sun. Golden apples of the sun.

It sounds like paper rice. Everyone is whispering.

We don’t need to whisper.

***
The bread was broken a long time ago. We didn’t do it, but we want to fix it. We want to put it back together. And we like a sandwich now and again.

***
Apples, two for the price of one.

I will stay awake all night and all day to see who’s with me.

***
Two mirrors looking at each other: that’s the whole of everything, my friend.

***
Warm here, everything inside the heart, apples in the refrigerator.

I could eat the whole thing.

Could, but I’d rather share.

***
The door is a jar and I say Yeah, you’re good goddamn correct.

However you get thru, I’m holding your head so you hear me all the way. You were there too, and I want you to understand the whole thing.

***
It’s warm here, everything inside the heart.

Did I see the flutterby fluttering by? The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun. Golden apples of the sun. Golden apples of the sun.

I hear everybody’s fingers on the hymnals. Every arm along the timpani. Everyone is whispering.

We don’t need to whisper.

It just took me so long to talk, that’s all.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I am a lucky boy to see the things I see and do the things I do.

I like to be me.

The lucky numbers work, the hard work works, the faith in the faith that never balks works. Love wins.

Let's do this again soon.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

The looks the stars give each other under the light of the moon.....

A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN

Do you remember what the moon sounds like?

***
Itching off the hood of your car, I feel the need to become a series of elements. Four of them fight to cancel each other out. Only one is lonely enough to show his shadow. He only comes out when there’s light.

***
Combined effort of all the gods to lift the sun: why aren’t the gods able to keep their smiles on?

***
It’s a bit there, isn’t it? You get wrapped up in your own mythology there, if you cook yourself too long!

All this talk about the pyramids, the moon, you’d think it all a joke. A hand under the fabric holding the rabbit, as it were.

Vulnerability is only the step before the shoe.

***
The foot before the shoe. Vulnerability is only the foot before the shoe.

***
Why am I railing about how hard the rocksides are?

Everyone knows how to hit their head best.

***
One wish is here and the other is there. It’s only a matter of time before they are in the same room together.

Owlish angle, long considerate branch of treebone.

***
All the trees are grey in the light of the rocksides, prisoners of memory.

A bone as thin as fine china.

A platform with a crooked cross tied to it.

Secrets of secrets.

***
You can’t sit down anywhere in this town without touching your ass to some royalty.

Isn’t that right?

Lever.

***
We have to take the judge’s nipples back to the store.

***
The sound inside your shin.

***
Inert.

***
Cataract or clouds, the velvet or the dam, the one note I can sing and the one note that sounds exactly like it that no one can sing.

***
Torch of fire, fire of paper and chrome. Flecks of snow on creamcolored linen.

A dream that someone’s talking to you!

Yes! Supposing all of this is true, exactly what do you think it means?

Cigar is just a cigar and then it’s ashes, etc. Ashes and snow, motherfucker. Boxes as far as the footfall goes.

Failing my arm, I’ll give you that.

How’s that?

***
None more flying L than Scott, more LIQUOR L than half a leg.

The pillars of research.

***
Providing you look enough like Jesus, you will die like all of us.

Aphorism by proxy.

***
Two and three, Life In Red and many passersby a-looking at a pair of trousers on a fish. And why the trousers on the fish, you want? Who knows.

A maybe it’s the long way.

You been reading too much read. You need to take a nap.

***
Why do we have to take the judge’s nipples to the store?

Why?

***
You see this silver star, buddy? You’ll never know exactly what it means. I don’t know exactly what it means

I think that’s what it means.

Shut up. Just shut the fuck up.

***
A monosyllable shine. Is the water in the bone on the inside, in the middle, or is it everywhere, ground into all the parts equally, weighing everything down?

You’re awfully wet. Why are you so wet suddenly?

***
Straight Jude. Aphorisms by proxy. Anti gauze and new serotonin, new abyss and new continuance.

Feads of lights. Norms of hor.

***
Someone set on the twerp.

Who said that?

The deferens is what est caught. Se swall.

Enormous fields of east, sobriety. Birds of prey.

***
I fight so hard to keep the shoes in dreams the shoes get sore and run to all the green in the world.

***
Why am I never tired?

***
One arm on the comma of the wall, how long were you asleep?

Every time I close my eyes something happens.

***
I have always been more than willing to make the step backwards.

***
Intuition practiced as a bloody sword, I know two things. One of them is you. The other is nameless and formless.

What are moons when the day is stranger than anything?

On the first Christmas on Earth I long to tell you I have nothing to give you. Everything is in this place. We just have to go inside and get it.

***
None more I than I, you say that word again.

***
One arm or other on the well, the birds of grey go roughshot on the stars above. All noises ground. The secret of secrets, found in the middle of your shin, the middle of your heartbeat, the middle of your appetite, the space between your nerve and your hurt.

Inexplicably, you are crying and smiling at the same time.

***
I’m thinking about the only things that still exist.

***
Having become the full moon off the hood of your car, I long to be the mottled leaves of autumn.

Ocean dogs, quakes upon your research, upon the oceantop, barking and grimacing with the cold water around them.

Constantly seeing the sun in quads of light thru the trestle would confuse the holy shit out of me too.

The ocean is a grand river, isn’t it?

***
Do you remember what the moon sounds like? Spin Christmas on Earth, Easter Sunday on Earth. Every day is New Year’s Eve.

Secret of secrets.

Den of dens.

***
Bells ring in the backseat, 12 of 9, 11 of 9, a blurt of reason, exactly why I love you, even though 8 of 9, 7 of 9, naked water all over the clear of us, batfucked, batfucked, batfucked, 2 of 9, cannons of it, illusions of it, great white sharks in shards of it, great white sharks of itin open sea, 1 of 9 in clarity, no secrets, approved for God and all the fucks, and whatever is next is always a surprise, always an arm, always a leg, always stars and fire to a hand. You should really look up next time. Who knows what’s really out there?

***
Calico cats and love dots, done with the traffic of cold cones, and we’re there.

The ore of right is usually right.

The ore of right is usually right. The more of us there are, the more we warm it up.

***
I am a web.

I am less than a web.

The spirit will not touch a web.

The spirit will not touch less than a web.

I am like this when you find me.

***
God made a decision and no we no longer show our faces.

False shame would never make a visible god.

Fuck that. Aren’t all the gods invisible?

Why’d we make invisible gods?

***
The more of us there are the more we warm it up.

Tent full of love, the more we are the more we warm it up.

Silver star.

Secret of secrets.

Den of dens.
---------------------------------------------------------

The muscles of my world are flexing, running farther, stretching out. Stinging with energy. Reshaping themselves. Forcing everything else around them to look at them differently.

Two doors are always better than one.

Two heads are better than one.

The more the merrier.

Et cetera.

Love and eternity to everyone.

the closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

"I've seen them kissing out in the hallway....."

"The Word is broken up.
There is Knowledge.
Knowledge is relation.
These fragments are Creation.
The broken manifests Light.”
--aleister crowley

“There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in…”
--leonard cohen

“Yelling as hard as they can
The doubters all were stunned
Heard louder than a gun
The sound they made was love…”
--the flaming lips

CHRISTMAS ON EARTH

We say things are looking up and they are.

We notice the clouds more because we’re looking for the sky.

All the rocksides in the world won’t point anywhere but up.

***
Polished speed is speed nonetheless, its fires and trestles over anything it wants to, its orange-grey whine against your ear. Its sound is a high-pitched weal, toenails on a chalkboard. The only thing it makes is salt water.

***
There is a word for what we do.

***
We notice the clouds more because we’re looking for the sky. Or better, we’re looking for where the sky meets the ground. That part no one’s ever found. That part that may or may not exist.

Come on. How can it? How can the sky ever meet the ground? The horizon’s just the thing that tells us there’s a line thru everything, a line between everything.

Show me the point where the air becomes soil and I’ll love you forever.

***
When it makes its highest arc, you may turn the wheel to the right.

***
The figure eight on its side goes on forever.

***
Giza hums. Several different rocksides use the letter J in all their communication.

Khufu, jealous, the roar of amnesia, never learns to pronounce their names.

***
You can’t argue: we’re made of water. What’s the number? 80%? 85%? We’re up to the gills in water.

You’re all wet. That’s why you’re like the ocean to me.

***
I know the stars have everything they need. They move along all night, while I’m out cold, sleeping everything off. That’s why I wake up in the morning with the word “BREATHE” written on the palm of my hand in black, black ink, and for a while I don’t, because I don’t know how it got there.

***
Come quickly. I only have two arms.

Polished speed? I don’t know what else I can give.

I’ll give you both of my arms for a promise of sorts.

***
King of amnesia, the hour Khufu in the ordnance. His teeth growl from their chambers, a femoral artery in the name of love.

***
The fabric is not always even, the skeleton of white ribs against the flush of yellow, toothache yellow. The pieces bite crooked.

I sunburn easily. Come quickly.

***
You need to send two tapes. One for the fathers and one for the organizer. They claim no knowledge of each other, would you like to introduce them?

The first tape just says you were on fire. What’s that for?

The second tape is a little rusty, a little unclear. It might be on fire. I’ll show you.

***
Fire, all right, that’s what it was, the mortar and the squares and lines between them, all in the name of fire, the name of gods over a kettle, forming sides and opposites, poles and bars, bent stakes and ore, ores from every color of the spectrum, from every ant-thought of the universe, and what they share is nameless.

What’s it called again?

***
Khufu the king of the forgotten, speaking in the gibberish of intention.

In the house there are three hallways but one door that no one ever uses.

I the enterer and I the door I enter.

Rubies scuttling over a cube.

***
Crabs lust thru the water. All the rocks are gleaming with sweat. I am tired from walking almost forever.

Wait. Is there an almost forever?

There could be a forever inside the almost forever. A shin-thick tube of perfectly clear water. Every atom of it aware of its own name, but no atom refusing to soot the others with his given name. None of them know the word ‘water’.

***
Forgetter of amnesias and elevators of skulls. There are more hallways than destinations.

***
The rocksides point upward. Upward points to the prefix and the musing, the bath and the concrete.

In the main hallway, we find an enormous leaden basket containing a pair of red shoes and a jellyfish. Everything around us is sputtering water, depths of water, and our gills are not quite ready for the deluge. We are filled with white wood and water. The ocean disappears.

The water has to come out somehow. Nonetheless, we are smiling.

***
The storm refutes the echo of its own name.

***
After longing for your touch for the longest time, I am reduced to talking about the satellites reflecting off the hood of your car.

I will hold your head close if it helps you read me.

***
Polished speed, a dime a dozen, a fork in the road for those who hunger and a knot for those who thirst.

***
No matter how I cut it, you are mostly water.

That is why you are like the ocean to me.

God, I love the ocean.

***
A tongue of your own want. How patient are you? strung of casts and blown glass, how much of the load can you shin?

Longer legs are always getting wet under the same spray.

***
The Sabbath is set for scotch and masturbation.

Thank you for saying that.

Well, that’s good. We can do something else.

I want to do something else.

Fine with me. Greeneyed socks and masturbation.

Four corners.

I’m glad I’m not a Christian.

***
Is there an almost forever? I almost hate to ask.

Stupid questions seem to cycle after the infinite.

Well then.

There could be a forever around the almost forever. A shin-thick tube of perfectly clear water. Every atom of it aware of its own name, but no atom refusing to soot the others with his given name. None of them know the word ‘water’.

None of them know the treadmill either.

***
The clouds were humiliated in the eyes of the stars, and then even the stars fled. Armed with flashlights, we set to searching.

Feather of water, feather of air, and feather of dirt, the absence of two in the presence of one. Didn’t we start with the number two? It added up to fingers for the stolen shoes, to silent movies, to war whoops and several shades of grey, the grey slaloming down the drain and smelling like burnt hair.

Perspective is a dream of the gods in the mouths of babes.

***
He who speaks in aphorisms does not speak.

I would rather be the moon off your teeth along the stroke of midnight. The sun dappling onto the sidewalk. None of this says I love you enough.

I have to stretch my arms out in an uncomfortable position behind my head to get into character for the sun. He thinks I am bluffing. I have practiced my lines and cues, but I am a better moonglow when I am careening by your mouth, and I tell him this, and I tell him a good director would indulge me, a great director would listen to me, and a genius would let me do it myself, let me see the real you in the ultimate flesh, living flesh, and I don’t care if my arm falls asleep: I am not a human being anymore.

***
One taco here. There’s more to eat at home.

***
Legion away of smallshinned dune. Elfin lake. Bob Dylan’s ocean. I unroll my sleeves in case anything particularly offensive happened to deserve it.

Fall asleep now or watch the most passionate silence.

***
Things are looking up.

Look at all the cracks in the rocksides. How come it’s so dark inside them?

The sun refuses its fork.

The figure eight on its side goes on forever. Every time someone commits it to memory, they remember their first time.

***
I don’t do the sudoku numbers because they let the dragons out. Why do we call it the back of our hands?

For the fake form of privacy, there’s nothing more ample than the wish to break bread, in any form, to see the real you.

Part of everything is flamingocolored.

***
Two? The real two? The implication is always the real two.

The implication is always more. Expansion. Higher degrees. Uncertainty.

***
Why do we call it the back of our hand? What’s it in back of?

***
Rocks in line for the rocksides, no one telling them shit, the glyphs of steam, shintight tubes of antennae crackling against each other.

That’s why everything is so loud here. The music has to reach us over that.

God damn.

We all want to be cowboys.

***
Despite what everyone knows and most vociferously denies, there truly is nothing like this in the entire world of worlds.

***
Colony rex. Sirens of nudity. Shelves of nakedness, the generations darker by the second.

Before we leave everyone will be on the scale, and we’ll hold an apple in one hand and an orange in the other, and we’ll compare each other but we’ll agree, by our own desires and natures, to feel the same about everything, we’ll agree to agree, we’ll compare ourselves to each other and blur the lines between us, purposefully.

The rocksides stand taller to the sun each day.

Their symbol is a cube with an asterisk over it. The years are marked by the distance between the cube and the asterisk.

Some people have looked at the symbol and said it’s not an asterisk up there, it’s the sun, and no one’s argued with them. We just sit there and watch the glitter of discovery in their eyes. It happens every time.

***
Polished seed, toenails on a chalkboard. The shunt of green sky, yellow sky, leaves of hooded precision.

We are doing the same thing and it feels exactly right.

Sun stars, the gnarls of mop stars, the facades of angel stars.

The onyx glow around the priestess subsiding for the violet galloping across her hair.

Soaped agate on the floor like foam. The memory of foam. Sea-drift and seaweed by the door, standing guard. Everyone else comes in with their sandlegs. With their arms cut by the rocksides. As expected, they come in perfect peace.

***
This is the first Christmas on Earth, the new colony of ants, the stars in a cluster so close together they overlap.

We come back to a different kingdom every motherfucking second.

We all want to be cowboys.

***
Long stars and even stars, we are doing the same thing and it feels exactly right.

On the left of the curtain is an offering: two pairs of eyes. Both are looking the same direction.

***
Stars erect in time for the morning sonata. Along the way they stop in the grassmarked fields and play their music.

None of the instruments have their names on them. The world has lost the will to possess. We now have the will to give. Everything is given.

Knowing everything is a gift makes everything that happens that much sweeter.

***
The sole destiny of altars.

The full moon over a fire and the fire under it.

An iridescent orange balloon.

***
Anytime I’m close you’re going to hear my heartbeat.

What joy it is to remember that.

***
Favorite flavors of ice cream. Chalk in a tube. You will say there is nothing of anything in this and only be half-right.

You will say there is everything in this and gain the other half.

Two right turns and a ravine. This is neither here nor there. After we climbed out, there was nothing we could not do.

***
Circles of women glitter away.

Men depart for the rocksides, their clothes on their backs, bladders of water behind them, practicing their straight lines, the pockmarks of the sun reflected on their feet, the rocksides shooting the sun at oblique angles all around them, a halo around the rocksides, and the men unable to see them, never knowing where to go or how they got there.

Eventually even the naked ones leave, Khufu on his stained darts and blue belts, counting on his fingers.

Giza represented by an arch, a failure of straight lines.

Eventually even the naked ones leave. That leaves two of us, both staring at the same girl.

***
Two of us standing here, brothers of our own proclivities, our own desires, made holy by our passion. And so we worship at the same altar.

***
Two? The real two?

Everyone knows what that means.

See the future for results.

***
I keep thinking: we’ve never seen the front of the boat ourselves.

The implication: we’ll never walk the plank?

***
Everyone knows nothing.

Nothing knows everything and envelopes everything and nothing.

Everything could be batfucked: the secret of secrets should be out for everyone to see.

***
We’ve done this as men. I’m not painted on plastic and I’m not painted on walls. I returned from the northern stars with flakes of cool blue skin, fishscales, corals, and a perfect antidote for death.

The other wise men shored up other kingdoms. Blue tarpaulins. Giza fell. The beards looked over Pompeii and Los Angeles and saw their vision fading.

Alone in the sky with shins of light, with bellies of light, the clouds were humiliated.

That left two of us, both staring at the same girl. Our eyes are always open.

We worship at the same altar, my brother.

Amen, they say.

So be it.
---------------------------------------------

All the numbers count to even numbers eventually.

The even numbers count to one in time.

I most admire the thing that always is, the I Am that everyone is, the I Am that is everybody, the soapclean glow of waves, of stars in the sky. Of secretly and suddenly hitting the water. Of finally standing up after a long, long sleep.

I am a boy over and over again.

Thank you.

Love and respect from simply the bottom of my heart.

The closer we are to each other, the closer we are to everyone else.

Tying a better knot in every spot that's tied together.........

“I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I learned to touch…”
--leonard cohen

THE DAWNING TRUTHS ARRIVE WITH LOW VOICES

Find out who your scarf is and tie it to you.

Not the devil. He is never here.

Just me.

***
Everyone is already naked.

Everyone is already naked and we’re discussing who the real Helen of Troy is.

This is the only way we have to compare ourselves. Apples and oranges only go so far.

***
The dawning truths arrive with low voices. Off the Pacific like a bell. Rubies scuttling over a cube.

***
Everyone is always inside my heart.

This is not near as painful as it sounds.

***
Thick plots of wood. A scatterbrained forest. Notes on the ground and tapering candles under it.

The roots here are all fucked up.

Keep moving.

***
You know the secret of the whole wheat.

I am so hungry I could eat a window.

***
Soaped of their flesh, the carnivores lair around the floor, around of meaning, nothing in the flesh or contemplated. A waterwheel sound.

And then there were three.

No, we don’t want to whisper. But we don’t need to scream.

***
Doorlocks and communities, the hooped whistle of fast-talk. I want you to understand, so I will use my hands to tell you, I will use the semaphore of love to tell you everything is right, that the ore is right, the skeletons are sturdy and the atoms are compliant. No one disagrees with the kennel.

I will use my arms and everyone will think I am flying.

It’s not in my poetry to say.

This is poetry on your terms.

***
Can you help me pick all these marbles up? We don’t want to trip over them.

***
All the marbles have little worlds in them.

The better to see you with.

The better to show you prism suns and moons, prism satellites, prism shields of love and oceans of rubies.

***
I will use my hands to find you, to hold your head, and tell you exactly what I mean.

Our friends will think of the sign of the Open Heart.

I will defer to the sign of the Open Hand.

The open hand can do or mean anything.

***
The dawning truths arrive with low voices. Off the Pacific like tiny islands. Rubies scuttling over a cube. The cube rises, shakes off its exteriors, and the sides grow convex. Like a lens
everything is behind us.

***
Whorls of hair, the drain clogged with the charge of water.

The roots are not what’s important here.

Keep moving.

***
Picture of a man eating a sandwich, what’s that? Are you not paying your attention?

Even the plagiarist is on the right track. We are all on the same wavelength. We are all the one.

It might help you to know the picture of the man eating the sandwich is a bit of a white lie.

***
It doesn’t look like it from here, but all those boxes, all those boxes with the corrugated metal walls are big as trains. It’s a trick of the brain, the boat they’re on is huge, and we’re so very far away the boat itself doesn’t look large enough to carry all that freight.

Maybe our eyes are playing trick son us.

Maybe ou reyes are playintg rickso nus.

Our eyes ARE playing tricks on us.

***
The lotus pin, what am I to do with it?

Four by thread and three by line and two by slope, the only thing is one by consensus.

***
I have always thought the best things in life were completely invisible.

Thus the blind leading the blind.

***
An inkling of the weight of the pack, the horse on the two-pronged crown.

The circle is baked into the wall. Everyone knows how to dance to it.

Where the hell is all the dynamite?

***
Arm's distance the rock. Scissors on three pairs of books. All the cactus in the world and all the water you could drink, no one exclusive of the other.

Spontaneously and without choice, I arrive at the perfect angle to love you.

***
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

That's the real beauty of all of this.

***
The first rule of the animals is to eat. The second is the rule of procreation. The third is the nameless rule, the one that needs no name for anything.

When I look into your eyes, it is the third rule I grasp the best.

Just reciting your name makes me feel split in two, into god and animal. One part sings your praises, calls you by your name because your name's the only one it knows.

The other part calls you by no name because, quite frankly, you are everything.

***
The circle is baked into the wall.

Do you choose a name or my other hand?

***
Standing by the speaker, everything jams in your heart. You could learn to love someone that way. Really. Shaking your heart into submission. But that’s not how it works, is it?

Tell me it’s more than vibration and hum.

***
Listen to all the cicadas. Can you believe that? All those invisible sounds mangling the air like electricity, burning sounds, the crackle and echo of the cicada legs on cactus, on dynamite, on corroded agate, on burnt feet.

Where’s you get all the dynamite?

Spontaneously and without control, I love you.

***
Oh, it’s more than that. The circle is baked into the wall.

That doesn’t make any sense.

How much would it take you to get it into the proper shape? You know, to whip it up a little bit?

You want to take a tanker?

No. What the fuck is that?

The circle is baked into the wall.

***
This is where I come in to tell you only the pretty girls know the whole wheat.

Find out who your scarf is and tie them to you.

From up here, looking down at my feet, I am a fucking mountain of made-up words. Swollen white heat. Rocksides pointing towards the sun and moon at their crookedest points upon the sky.

***
It’s no problem being open-minded. Just worry, really, about being open-hearted.

***
What’s this skin I’m in? Over the hum of the cicadas you’re the only thing I hear until the tree.

Whorled erections and there is never doubt.

Made-up swords. No in a silent movie, the lap of green bodied up to meet the rocksides.

If you touched it, what would you feel?

***
I am confident you’re on my radar: my arm is itching.

***
Has he told you about Life In Black?

No one talks about Life In Black anymore.

Shit. Crossing his arms, he’s getting there! He’s getting there! He’s going to give it up again! Starry nights! An armband of parental snot! Escutcheons of stars! A field made of a woman, the woman made of gooseflesh!

***
I can tell it’s morning. I can see the whites of your eyes.

***
A skull iris, they say.

I am confident you’re on my radar: my hands are itching.

***
Fence slats. Find out who your scarf is and tie them to you.

***
You’re burnt feet, Khufu. What are you trying to do?

Everyone is going to look at your rocksides and not know what to do with them. It’s like they’re there, and you can walk up the sides, I guess. You’d have to have your sticky shoes. What are you, some kind of spider?

You don’t even call them rocksides, and it doesn’t matter! No one’s looking at them the same way you are. You see all the insides. It’s all glitter to you. But you sure don’t have a clue about what we want to do with it.

***
Are your feet hot too?

Do you believe in my words at all?

They are only words.

***
I am confident you are on my radar: my fingertips are beginning to throb. I can feel each ridge and groove spill into the next one, and I know they are discrete, and I know that they are almost nothing, and I know they are mine.

Failing all of that, I would still give you my arm.

I promise.

***
Like a lens, everything is behind us.

Find out who your scarf is and tie it to you.

But you don’t have to be scared. It’s just a rockside. They’re supposed to be the color of fire.

Maybe not quite as hot, I guess.

I don’t know what they’re supposed to do either.

***
You have a thing on the back of your head. Now that you ask, it does look a little like blood. Life In Red everywhere, passion-style, ready for the proper ceremony. The proper foil. Do you have your cooking shoes?

***
I am confident you are on my radar: your scarf is tied to my scarf. At least I will never have an excuse to let you go myself.

All of this should be without control.

Let's keep all our accounts open.

***
Just reciting the circle's name, the circle is baked into the wall.

Follow bliss, for sure.

***
We'll stand by the rocksides and you can tell me about you, and I can tell you about me, and we'll admire all the past, and then we'll look up, the tops of the rocksides far, far away, and I'll tell you of the time I told you I was going to give you my arm, and every time I tell you I'll have the phantom itch.

I know me better than anyone.

I'd give you my arm anytime.

This is how we step back into the circle.
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Touching and feeling are among the best of both worlds.

Still deciding how many worlds there are. The answer is everything or nothing.

I feel words in the air in sparks I've never felt before. Everyone has them.

It is glorious when they all trickle out. Eventually, there's a flood to follow. The trees bloom, and we have more beauty to write about, more muses, more hugs, more love, and there's no room but to smile.

Love to all.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

If no one knows what a ratchet strap is then I'm in serious shit.........

I'M SO HUNGRY I COULD EAT A WINDOW

Here’s what it’s like: I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich. I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich and I have to say I’m blissed. I’m basking in a wave of joy, a ham-and-scrambled-egg joy, the hot bread on my mouth and the crack of bacon. Snapping flesh.

Everything tastes like an animal, darling.

***
I can’t believe I’m so hungry. My hunger knows no bounds. I eat everything in front of me.

Insatiable, lusting after carbon and oxygen, the elements inside me burning until they are gone.

***
That’s only peanut butter and jelly on a sandwich. I don’t know what you’re doing.

Is that how the whole wheat works?

***
You know the secret of the whole wheat, but you’re an animal, just like I am, a real animal. Whole wheat wouldn’t know itself. It doesn’t have the power to.

I have dust on my shoulder. I need to go back inside.

***
There is no afterglow. There is only glow.

***
You know the secret of the whole wheat, but you’re an animal, just like I am, a real animal. Whole wheat wouldn’t know itself. It doesn’t have the power to.

Condescendingly the animal spirits tell you something different every time you look at them. Are they really better than the vegetable spirits?

***
Animals in heat make cold nights bearable.

I am learning to catch flashes of your aura.

There is no afterglow. There is only glow.

***
The secret of the whole wheat is the one piece that it is, under the weight of everything else around it.

***
I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich. I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich and I have to say I’m blissed. After all, I am eating the world’s greatest sandwich. The menu says it’s the world’s greatest sandwich. There’s no question of it. My taste buds are gnarled by fresh artichokes, caramelized bacon, the tang of red onion, and the crunch of bread on my teeth.

I’m almost confused by all the flavors. Is this how bacon really tastes? Is this what I’ve been waiting for? And it is, it is so much it hurts to talk of it. It hurts to write of it even now, because I should just eat the fucking sandwich and enjoy it in its time for what it is and not drag it out like this, and not mourn that it’s not here all the time, or whatever.

This is why people cry when they’re truly happy.

***
The tops and bottoms of notes, the clicks of the clock-hands on the wall, the agate Khufu down the well, glove notes along the bank, the trigger in my throat that shows you what I’m saying is true.

The pyramids are not fake. The way they feel is not fake.

Time draws out. Alchemy shifts and appraises its fortunes. I walk around with a smile. It’s just the way it feels.

***
I have always thought the best things in life were completely invisible.

***
The best things in life being completely invisible: that’s the real alchemy, then. That’s the world in the right place at the right time.

Two long trees over the waterline. A color chosen by the child of the forest for each of them. A talk between them and they see they’re both old souls, they both remember the stew, the sludge of early man. A long cloud disappears overhead.

***
The spirit will not touch a web.

The spirit will not touch less than a web.

I am like this when you find me.

***
I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich. I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich and I have to say I’m blissed. I’m eating the world’s greatest sandwich, with all you’d imagine that implies, and I look over at the couple sitting two empty seats away, and they’re eating the world’s greatest sandwich too. They don’t have the one I have, but I know in my heart somehow it’s the same. It’s equivalent.

I’m not jealous. Am I supposed to be jealous?

Perhaps I have found my family.

At the very least we may respect each other’s good taste.

***
The alchemists dreamt of long patches of clouds that folded like linen over the colored rocks of their fortress. Everybody is on the late side.

On the floor, a series of loops. Bulbs of oxygen colliding and coiling, a pair of breathy cobras, a belt of sound.

***
Light the fire with your mouth and you’ll never put it out.

***
White Khufu against the orange of the mountains when they showed him what the shackles did to those who disobey. Ten touch the number ten on the wall.

What time is it? The moon is ready to catch the sun’s light. That’s when everyone takes their clothes off.

***
Light the mouth with your fire and you’ll leave your mark forever.

***
Strangulating licks. How many candies to the center of your heart?

***
What once were secrets are now the sins of omission for everyone out of the loop.

In the same room there are several heroes, several deities, and a legion of youths aspiring to their apprenticeships. In the heat of the moment, all of them in the same uniform, the line is blurred. Who is teaching who?

Sapped of his wits, the laggard Khufu is tied to a plank over the foam of the ocean.

Can a bird swim?

In the sea he would be humiliated.

***
Awake suddenly.

I am not used to being the Eternal Beloved.

I will learn from the best.

***
The metal blanket sank like a stone.

***
I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich. I’m sitting in a diner eating the world’s greatest sandwich and I have to say I’m blissed. I’m eating the world’s greatest sandwich, with all you’d imagine that implies, and as I turn to look out the window and enjoy my $11.00 view, I choke. Have I just put a price on my happiness?

That can’t possibly be the whole wheat.

I beg of you: finish my sandwich.

***
If the best things in life are truly invisible, then that explains my oven of sorrow: I couldn’t see the good in anything.

***
Everyone is taking their clothes off, he said.

Alone in the crowd, they were humiliated.

***
You know the secret of the whole wheat.

You are an omnivore, just like me.

Take the first bite. I will follow your lead.

***
Can’t see anything in the oven anyway. We, in fact, are outside. I just thought about that.

***
Where are we supposed to be when everyone is hungry?

What about when everyone is naked?

How do we know they need us at all?

***
You drew first blood. I’m just following you.

Everything else is just a picture of a man eating a sandwich.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Love to everbody in the ways they want it.

It is hot enough to cook an eggplant outside. My hands are freezing like icicles.

But my heart is always warm. Everyone is inside of it.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

Is everyone just holding the same ratchet strap?

HOW THE WHOLE WHEAT WORKS

Huge animal in the rearviewmirror. Do not know how to tell you except with words.

“Can you tell me how the whole wheat works?” I ask the prettiest girl in the room.

***
Wet hands cry for towels, the vegetable god calls for wax, the leopard spot calls for roasting sunset just to see it better.

The veins that hold our rain are fast asleep.

***
Three lanterns and the seat of cracked glass. Enamored sets of tigers and horses.

When the human beings get together they have no doors to close them.

***
The veins that hold our rain are fast asleep. How albatross of them.

***
Winter. Grains of snow. The abundant trees and the only tree. I tell you I only see the one tree, and then I have to recognize the forest as we hit it with our heads.

“Turn right,” I say.

“Right.”

***
Three past the sign of the open heart, the one that everyone makes at night before the bedside and the missing captain.

On my father I am missing a flashlight. Flashlight for the cold and for the bits of leather on the ground.

Some of us at the edge see trees. Some of us see a forest. All of us fall.

***
Captain corner. Delve of slick. Bent of the illusion and bent of the whine of cars, crossing the street into a giant group of us, the center fluxed over a blue shingle of flame. Having been the Eternal Misunderstood for so long, I laugh at what all of this means.

I am not used to being the Eternal Beloved.

I cannot see the forest for the woods either.

***
Certain corners of the world hold different trees.

The leopard tree holds the least amount of ground. He chooses the path of confidence, the path searched best in the perfect night, when the grass moves right and left to let your feet by unobstructed, parting itself because you’re there. The trail blazes itself in your honor.

***
Walking along, I choose the path of smallest footprints.

I will not stumble on another.

I will not walk on anyone’s toes.

As other people bump and crash into me, I cringe. It must be my fault.

***
“Can you tell me how the whole wheat works?” I ask on one elbow.

You refuse to let my head disappear. You like it where it is. Only the bridges so our heads can stay exactly where they are.

Patiently you wait for the tether to shrink and my eyes to drown in your own.

***
Moon surfing isn’t what it cracks to be, with all the vining and the grapes that drop the trellis seeds. Ant-side air and half-side air.

When I was 12 I didn’t know what a vulva was. Cracks in the cement.

Think of something Polish and out of gas.

The lexicon of ages strains to mark its territory. I wear softer boots to let them in it. There is nowhere more obnoxious than the floor when you are trying to fly: it never seems far enough away.

***
Wearing the crown of the Rose Prince, I defer to you if I should be purple or green.

Is an anthill brown?

Three left arms don’t make a right. But oh the ceremony when they touch your right arm the proper way!

***
Clouds and birds come up over the left side of the phone window. The tree branched only in one corner. I turned off the sink and wondered how to make the feeling come back, again and again.

***

Engine on the side of love, the bewitching begins. Mudcold hand in the hand of cooked bricks, all of us are looking. We all know you're in there. But it's gibberish: that's why it's taken so long to find you.

***

Two creatures in front of a birdbath, one rabbit, and one vegetable, and they're trying to hustle each other out of a pair of shoes. Nothing gives so the rabbit says, "Let's make some time to blow the fuck away," and he's agreeable, the vegetable is, so what else can you say? Where's the dramatic collision? the arc? The bell? Is it Scott, you aren't making any sense? or Scott, you've dropped your marbles finally this time, haven't you?

You're quite a specimen: you're not afraid of all this mad self-indulgence, but you're stuck! And God-forbid that anyone with half a brain find out you're quite afraid of sounding exactly like what you've become! Yr frada sn. Nala nothing. Inso rife oreason and it's not fourlong a dam. Scawag. Anot therones younastor.

12 by 3. Out by lanterns.

That's exactly what it sounds like.

***

This is supposed to have a trick television part right here.

How come the albatross is fond?

***
Chocolate growing in the opposite direction of our kingdoms. Did we plant them in the wrong direction?

Foothill Blvd. goes the wrong direction too. 50% one way, 50% the other.

How patient we are. Quartz arrowheads in the center of the room, I stared at the back of your knees and told a joke about 1979. 1951. All the years with fractions and kid gloves, all the ones with bad advice, and all the ones with something indefinite to say.

***
So what are you doing when the words come out like that?

Nothing.

Nothing terribly exciting.

Why are people reading this? It’s like the inner workings of a clock that can’t tell time.

It does tell time. There is no yesterday.

***
Patient quartz in the pocket of the doctor. Every time the most horrible surgery is met with the brightest prognosis: you will live, he says, a ring of tiredness in his brow. You will live for now.

***
No yesterdays. The clock doesn’t tell time and yes it does, and no it’s all analogies. Nothing terribly exciting.

***
Chocolate fear doesn’t work with the whole wheat.

How does the whole wheat work?

I am not used to being the Eternal Beloved.

***
Look, I’m not thrilled about all these loops on the ground instead of paper. You’re going to have to ask yourself: is this for real? Is this what you want?

No questions asked.

***
Dreams in congruence, all the dreamers wet in rain. All the hands locked on the street to keep the thieves out, the dreams even lock the thieves out. The powdered night caught high by moonlight. You can see the smoke for miles and miles.

You caught the words right out of my mouth.

***
Polished off like a pair of wet rocks.

I am not used to being the Eternal Beloved.

***
The thieves out. The enormous moon avoiding the light. I am the man in the picture.

***
The deforded words are starting to come. They hear that all the time.

Three past the sign of the open heart, the birdbath of water and oil. What did you see today?

I am thisclose to holding you by the head, straight to my eyes, and telling you exactly what this all means.

***
Scott, you've dropped your marbles finally this time, haven't you?

***
The proper ceremony and the proper abandon, the proper cups to drink out of, the proper side of the bed, the marbles in every imaginable place.

Lose some here, you can pick them up anywhere.

What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.

People: this is poetry on everybody’s terms.

I am holding you by your velvet cheeks as I am telling you this.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The air is think with smiling and a lust for life.

I have no idea if any of this makes sense.

I am inside-out all the time and it feels wonderful. I am no longer embarrassed about my seams and tags showing.

Love to all in all amounts.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

The hawk and the boy with the ratchet strap.....

“I hate to have other people hear me sing this song

If this reaches you before I do

Follow it to ‘I love you’
That's where I'll find you

And my head is my only house until I find you...”
-- don van vliet


THE SIGN OF THE OPEN HEART

I crack things sometimes to see the light inside. It is good for it to come out sometimes.

Would that it was always out.

***
Insert war whoop here.

***
Heavy bells on lonely lines, cracks in everything.

Even a smile is a crack.

Light comes in and it comes out.

Everyone is overjoyed.

***
Everyone is talking about the richness of the syrup, the way it coats their throats, the way it lingers on the fingers.

I have time to say: I know exactly what I mean. I know exactly what you mean too.

My guess is as good as yours.

***
Median pyramids. What’s in the middle? Time zones rip the spelling test apart, and no one sees the final result.

Why not know exactly?

***
Three times I said it. Everything is relative.

How most give up! the sky on their backs enough to think about?

What of the skies above those skies? What of the air, every toss of oxygen and of carbon, every speck of smoke?

And what of this life, where everything shears and spalls from something else?

Who are the real amoebas?

I split to honor the beauty of others. Am I supposed to forget my own as I do this?

At this moment, we are naked on the scales, each weighing ourselves, and seeing what the others have.

Three oranges that are never sliced apart, infinity still exists and always will for us.

***
Heavy bells on lonely lines, cracks in everything. I crack things sometimes to see the light inside.

It is good for it to come out sometimes, very good. Would that it was always out: we would always be smiling.

***
Yesterday the empress upside down and now the Moon?

The perfect circle of the Moon can never be upside down. Just as you can never be in the wrong place.

The cards are waiting for me to shriek. And I have never been happier.

***
Heavy bells and four long lines. A robe of rifles. Three whole oranges and the scene of cops and robbers. Someone takes something. Something is given. Wind is in one place and the other.

Tethered to an ambiguous horn, we find consensus in our dreams.

***
The pillow of the stage. We’re sitting down. A knot of divers find a bell. A timpani of sound, the gallop of air against the anvil and the stirrup, the one pounding on the other. No ill intent is meant: we want to wake each other up.

Khufu on the other side of the pyramid has other things to do. The rest of us will wait for him to return from the desert, golden Giza waiting in the order they were received.

***
If you stare at it long enough, everything is art.

***
The psychic, the witch, and the wardrobe in the picture, gaining ground. Perfectly ambitious and willing to take on all comers.

I should tell you: I have no fear of the wind here.

***
The heavy minstrel with his back on the wall, the black hat cross his path. What does it take for him to breathe? There are no records of a bus there for a hundred years. I’ve been breathing like a bus since before he was born.

***
How many of us were there?

***
We are still moving. Keep your hands off the wheel while the ride is still in motion.

***
I am the one in the picture.

I am the Eternal Fright, the frigate of echoes on a dusty night. I say the same thing over and over again until it rings a bell.

Packs of wolves.

Pieces of wolves.

***
Dentalium shells on the wind and on the tongue. The whistle between the teeth. The fossil you and the skull inside: all of us have the power to look inward. All of us are God.

I know exactly when I am going to die.

***
Put your hands up. Give the sign of the Open Hand, the symbol for empty and full at the same time.

Everyone knows you are in here.

***
The Giza God and all the arms in the world. The sun of the Moon, the Carthage of the spirit.

I met the pyramid full force. And the gods made love.

***
My right arm under your head this time, and my left arm to embrace you, the morning with sagecolored string and clouds. Invisible birds massaging notes together, sliding from one note to the next like any untrained singer, the song for the sake of the song.

***
The first offering was the arm, the sweet left arm, and Khufu the Angry flew where the sky became a soft blue metal.

All of the frustrated beating of arms! all of the furious rowing about! and all he had to do was reach out: the wind picked him up like a feather.

Shiera would have been proud.

***
“The Moon’s upside down.”

“No, it’s not. Not tonight. Not ever.”

***
Dreams in congruence, everyone sees the same angel now.

***
Three whole oranges and no knife can cut them apart.

***
Everything feels like yesterday.

This is the love that has no past.

***
Who are the real amoebas? None of us are splitting up. We stick together like jelly in a jar. The jar goes everywhere and the jelly gets around but sticks together in the name of love.

***
The lust of the air, the larger stars in front of the smaller stars, the languid shadows floating in the dark. Inside the temple, a radio voice is quietly hemming a story about trash. We are laughing, and the voices inside us have finally come out together, just as I’d imagined it.

And the gods made love.

***

The larger stars in front of the smaller stars, but how those smaller stars let us know they shine!

Smoothened features and Cassiopeia’s calves. Last written down September 1992, I was only a dream.

The larger the pattern, the more godly the searchers have to be.

***
Joy without limit. I have to deduce another name for what came before. Without its contours in front of me, I have no idea what to call it.

I am sure its name is very long and difficult to pronounce.

The image in my mind can be described in two words: pendulum stars.

***
Marta nudges me out of slumber. “Wake up,” she says.

The pillow rolls off the edge of the bed. “Can you tell me how the whole wheat works? My mom keeps asking and I don’t want her to be embarrassed anymore.”

***
Pendulum stars and nothing to hold them up but the air in a different language.

***
When the stars look like teeth, that’s the time I know to stop.

***
Pendulum stars. Smoothened features and Cassiopeia’s calves.

Your arms, beloved. Generations of prizes and intellects. Moons.

The one who holds two keys and enters by the same unlocked doors.

***
Nothing in the books shows us how to do this.

White panes of glass on candlelit roofs. Round rocks beneath our feet. The flask of colors opened and closed by our eyelids.

Dominion over all and under it nothing.

***
Dirty rain. No arm in the loop or out of it, no nine on four, no two to zero, no path between or path without.

Stony something with the antlers removed, all the stars spell the encyclopedia of saints and martyrs. Golgotha turns Christ to wine. The wind turns air to magic.

Stonesmiths build other lifetimes. Stars build mouths that love to sing.

The larger the pattern, the more godly the searchers have to be.

***
Stars sunning in the wake, pendulum stars, vegetable stars, burning up over the sky. The air smells of fennel and grass. Jasmine in the far-off.

The larger the pattern, the more godly the searchers have to be.

The stars are begging to show me their teeth.

I reach my arms up to them.
----------------------------------------------------

Words fail sometimes and all I can do is try to show my insides to everyone. It must be frightening as holy fuck.

Sorry.

I am smiling and I hope you are too.

Love to you all and everything that matters to you.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

The more the merrier, said one ratchet strap to another.........

“THAT SWEET LEFT ARM,
THE ONE CLOSEST TO MY HEART”

What horn of flesh are you trying to escape?

***

The ghosts of rain, the etched lymph of color on the sky: they call that a rainbow.

On three feet, you wouldn’t get there any faster.

***

Extra breath. My lungs are sieves for rocks in oxygen.

***

The agate Khufu, the rock flying over layers of meaning, layers of calcium, red shells as far as anyone can see.

Can anyone tell me it doesn’t matter?

Khufu’s arm is the majesty of his kingdom: the first thing he could give away.

***

Beyond the wall of people, the organ-grinder. The syphilis of what we want versus the nodes of our lust, the sarcasm of our love.

I’m missing four bones in my ear to do with invisibility and, apparently, levitation. That’s what my doctors are saying. That’s why I walked the extra mile to see you. I could have taken the bus, you see, but something about it seemed cheap, you know? Like I wasn’t working hard enough for your graces. And you said No, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t ask you to do anything like that, you said.

At midnight the sprinklers at the park went off. We packed our gear back into the van and drove back home.

***

Infinity eight. The half- or quarter- understood. The shelf of whistles starved of air. Can you breathe like a bus? I’ve never even seen you turn your bucket out.

***

The easiest way to do it is for me to come up to you and hold your head while I am telling you this.

***

Second easiest way: for me to just fuck your brains out.

***

Carved wishes: I’m just down the hallway. I write songs about the songs of loneliness and in my dreams I fly with Egypt’s gods and their women. I am an extra wheel should the truck ride off the road.

“It’s not meant to go off-road,” the mechanic said to you.

***

Amoebas. Feathers and light poking thru the slop. I feel I have to look you right in the eye as we drive straight past the onramp, the pieces of fudge brownie back and forth and Scott’s directions based on fast-food landmarks and thrift stores.

“Did we pass Taco Bell?” I ask.

***

Your arm is sympathetic, sweet to me, and full of the things I want to write about. The language I use is the semaphore of love: I am not dragging you along, I am not telling you where to go. I am only turning on the light so I can show you where I am.

If you already know, I’m sorry.

***

My left arm under your head, and my right arm embracing you. But the point is equally well-taken if you’re on my right-hand side and I can’t see you clearly, as long as you come with the same intent as yesterday.

How I hunger for the bare parts of your soul.

***

Rocks of oxygen, incarnate word.

***

You know what I’m afraid of? I’ll tell you because I love you.

I’m afraid of driving under a freeway overpass. I’m afraid when I’m having too much fun in the car with you, I’ll lose control and the freeway will decapitate me. Not you- me. You’ll be fine, and you’ll drive away, my head on the overpass and my body on the road a mile behind you, and nothing of me in the car for you to remember me by.

There. I said it.

***

The night we first watched the moon together, I remember in the blue light you’d find in a camp stove, white blips across it, a screen in front of it to keep the fire from blowing out. And it won’t blow out, you said, because we took the time, we put the screen in, and we’re oranges, halves of oranges, and we fit together.

Blown loose from bivouacs and cars with no doors, we are the first ones at the medics, receiving the first of the salve, the freshest salve, proving the doctors used their arms the right way the first time.

***

Swallowing a rock: that’s what it’s like to breathe out here, the number nine on peroxide air, on windracked beats. Swallow a rock and breathe like a bus.

***

Three feet and agate, blown-glass roses and the sweet left arm, the one with tire tracks and extra-large desire.

You are the one in the labyrinth with the golden braid. It was inevitable we’d cross paths.

***

The steel of hearts. Sound of flesh and cats, the wring of hangers and air, the closet full of cats and the prince unable to control them, all the kibble in the world and no one to share it with, and never what you want. Never the fish of peace, never the compacts with the enemy to keep the peace, and never the time to complain.

Two is the number of hands, the number of wings I offer you. We put the rocks together in the order they are given to us.

***

Khufu stoned, the metal at his shin and all of his crying unable to pry his arm from under the temple.

***

That sweet left arm, your left arm, the left arm of my dreams and catalyst id, catalyst arm, catalyst leg and beautiful leg, abandoned leg as the other takes a step, two hands for the one who has to hold, two shoes outside the tent and four within, two shoes by the bedside table of the one who sleeps with one foot off the bed, and two fingers for the ones who think that all of this is armed consciousness, that this is empty soul, that this is the lung without the leg.

***

Formed and shaped, the perfect progress of white and shadow, that sweet left arm on the bed, that sweet, sweet arm, that angel womb arm, flood arm, that thought of golden ears and a waving hand.

***

Three fingers are even better.

***

The coulter of your elements: everyone adores them. They stand up straighter in your wake.

***

I am only turning on the light so I can show you where I am.

I am a flashlight.

***

The psychic, the witch and the path to all of us is love.

***

That sweet left arm, the left arm on your left, right below your shoulder, the dewdrop on my right arm’s petal, the shadow of you against me.

Scientists never have enough fingers. Why is no one else measuring this?

***

Who has been the flashlight and who has been the empty light?

***

The Giza God and all of us in shadows, the Osiris of cracks, the three fingers on the two that aren’t counted.

No one forces down our eyes.

***

One step to another, I match the trim of your arm against the grain of mine, the empress upside down, the suspended two, the triad on both sides, the miracle of sweat and rainbows. One. Two. Three. I cannot do anything about the empress but ignore her. Too much is at stake.

Two and three follow without foresight.

I fucking love your arm.

***

I turned the lights on. Something was missing.

Everywhere I tried to look was a space that needed light.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Words fail to convey entirely what happens.

The path to each of us is love.

More words will come, but they will only say more. They will not love more, they will not make more sense, and they will not make us any closer.

Would that they could, I would say them all the time in every possible congress.

The closer we are to each other, the closer we are to everyone else.

An additional ratchet strap can only carry the load better, so welcome home, they said.........

THE DEWDROP ON THE LOTUS PETAL

Khufu the eye of Shiera, the nod of the Bedouin, the one who plants the grass and eats it. The woman with the night sweats. The shell flipped on its back and the sound inside it choked and upside down, spilling out in reverse.

***

Reverse sweat. The dogs of time. Eleven is a good number, whether or not everything else is nineteen.

***

Heart and nod, professor: you have no pointers here.

***

There is half a net catching me, though I plan not to fall. Falling, whether or not I'm a happy thing, would definitely slip my aisles.

Can I go sideways?

***

Vermilion, loxcolored lips, the daddygone of secrets kept there. How my fourteen year-old me would have loved the fourteen year-old you.

Vagabond of delight, I feel the sticks of flowers for the first time.

***

I and you. Tumbled laundry. Hot fleece.

***

Sometimes it is okay to cry. It puts the fires out.

***

I am only untying a knot to retie it in a stronger place.

***

Four lines after one o’clock.

***

Sodden voices. The cat opens the door and gets into the garbage in the way the other cats do, but this time he’s hooked his paw on the lid, and you’d think the whole thing would tip over, but only a paper cup fell out. That was all.

***

No wonder you can’t breathe.

Sometimes it is okay to cry.

***

I Khufu the Angry, the He Who Turned To Love within the face of you, without knowing all your beauties, all your mysteries, all your intersections?

Child of Anger and Son of the First Vexation! you cannot know how many times I have to say hello to her.

You cannot know how many times I kiss her only to go back to the very beginning again.

***

The movie says it lasts almost four hours. I am being followed.

I am walking around the corner to your house, my love, my darling dear, and someone in a hard black Expedition is tailing me. I know he will kill me eventually. I take the Expedition to be the symbol of Death.

Without regard for anyone’s safety and very much without control or foresight, I point my left hand out to him, from the hip, and give him the sign of Fuck You and You Cannot Have Me Yet. My back is turned to him the whole time. He is close, but I don’t know what he is doing. Do I care?

With the curb fresh and the straight lines of fences and flaking white house trim gouged into the dust ahead of me, I start to fly.

That’s when I know I have passed the test.

***

Just do it again. The watch stopped by an accident.

***

You cannot know how many times I have put this same drop of water on your lotus petal. By now, you must be feeling it.

***

The watchtower, grimy as a vulgar word. A nine-piece band on the rhythm of sweat. Can you breathe like a bus? How many pistons pound you off?

The more you sit there, the more it’s clear: I am the one.

***

This is the bashful arm, the cloud over the tree, the heart that grows bigger into the side of the hillock, all alternate routes out of Los Angeles, the press of locust trucks, of coffeecolored clouds, of mud dusk hands, turning figure-eights around columns of stripes.

You said we were already here and we are. We have always been here and we will never leave.

***

You cannot know how many times I drop my drop of water almost, I forget to turn it off the right way, and someone makes the sign of pure water when we go to bed.

Drama= unsolicited remarks without direction.

I parse the fishing line and make it back without my hands or their jelly.

***

What are you doing?

It will be our secret.

***

She smiles so much! there is no way to tarnish it.

People: this is happiness on your terms.

Happiness on all terms.

ALL terms.

***

The bus driver keeps talking about John Fante, the real John Fante and not the movie John Fante, and the Alexandria Hotel. He’s Italian too, and I am heartbroken on my way to you, my dear, my sexy love, because this driver knows the pain of the desert, the pain of the great Arturo Bandini, the pain of walls, of the desiccated places in our souls, of the scales where we look at each other naked for the first time and weigh each other.

“Camilla Lopez,” he says, smiling. “Camilla Fucking Lopez.”

“Vera Rivkin,” I say.

On the walk down into the tunnel, I am crying.

***

Happiness on all, the desiccated places, the housecoat souls, the good red herrings and the bad red herrings, the earthquakes and the light. The cracks. The batik over the half-rock of the car, corralled by night.

The cow guillotine in the green wood. Polishes of tusks. Refuses of tusks. Sisters of the moon.

Something looks like a sickle.

***

What do I know about the sickle? I found shotgun shells in the house of love. I know the sign of self-destruction.

Knowing the sign of self-destruction, I give the sign of I Am Your Rose Prince.

The mirror never sees what we see.

Everyone sees their own angel. I see other angels.

“Vera Rivkin,” I say, in the middle of the Santa Barbara night.

***

The sign of abundance: the three-lanterns over the ice line.

I know exactly what it means.

***

Crushed beneath ecstasy, our gods get hot. We blow them off the temple.

We didn’t know they could not fly.

How is it that we can?

***

I know one thousand words about the tree, in direct proportion to the number of petals on the ground.

No one can see you in here yet.

***

How far to the next mountain?

***

The old adage: how many helpers does it take to change your lights?

By yourself, the answer is X.

With another, the answer is half of X.

With a third, who knows?

After the ninth, the time it takes grows exponentially. Too many irons in the kitchen melt the kettles and the pots turn black. The cooks with third-degree burns are never able to cook the way you want them to.

Sometimes it really is okay to cry. It puts the fires out.

***

Effortlessly the spirits around us
come to blows: their breath an emergency
of ultimate order. You are the locus,
the point of origin, the windless green,

and all the purple petals thru its surface,
the flower from the stem, the stem from the earth.
You leave your fingerprints on fingerprints.
Your neighbors want your flowers and your warmth,

both of which feed the other: a whole apple
eaten without guilt, knowing conscience clear
the apple tree you're growing's worth the trouble.
Your stomach doesn't mind. You catch your skin

in constant double-take: Everything growing.
Your branches reach the deepest core of me.

***

The watch stopped on an accident, three-lanterns, and we never saw the end. And the gods made love.

***

Khufu the agate, the stone of flesh, the smoothness of the firstborn metal, the energy of lava cool in its red arms, its ridges and snakeness evening, falling into the center, resting upon the center like a pyramid.

***

Neither fish nor fowl, we hunger.

Our gods friable as ecstasy.

Thin as sticks.

Torched to tears by leaves.

Under our thumbs.

***

Arc-colored agate. Ground on rocks imaginary and kind, selfless and happy.

You are the cocoa leaf. Everyone else is just the rain.

***

Everything happens.

***

I marry you, I marry you, I marry you.

A third of my vow is my ego.

A third of my vow is the vow itself, the trusted verb, the never-fail, the distillation.

The other third is you.

My selfishness knows no bounds.

Dashed by my pure heart’s desire, paralyzed in the breath of a bus stacked with freight, I ask for your mercy.

By Love: I am less selfish when I call your name in the darkly dead of night.

***

I promise I will only say your name. I will not add a word to tip your perfection.

***

Dandruff flakes, the cowl of tiny compost ears, the rigid fauna when the ants are crushed between our fingers. And the gods made love.

***

I have no idea if any of this makes any sense.

***

This is how it was: on the last day, the blathering stopped. No one had a memory to spare. Ice melted hearts.

Everyone began to bang on the drum as if they’d never had the time to before, and they’d never get the chance again.

A cymbal tolled with infinite depth and infinite rhythm.

The churring of an automobile engine.

And the gods made love.
----------------------------------------------

I am ready to bow to the divine in all things.

I see the wonderful in everything.

I crack things sometimes to see the light inside. it is good for it to come out sometimes.

Would that it was always out.

Love to all of you in the ultimate amounts.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.

A ratchet strap in the car and one on top of the car might never make sense....

THIS SPACE HAS BEEN RESERVED BY PERMIT

The scene: Center Camp in Black Rock City, the Sunday after the Man burned down the second time. People are feeling around like ants, filling in cracks and nooks, filling couches, knowing the end is near, the mass exodus away from ritual and everyday majesty and the return to the ritual of the everyday, the ritual boredom awaiting them at home. The buzz of cell phones on the horizon. the snakes of steam arising from the two-lane highway. Errant, locust-like trucks. Parking structures. Black gum ground into sidewalks.

Is the mission to find the beauty in the everyday now, or is it to change the everyday in the image of what we all see out there?

-----

The scene: Center Camp in Black Rock City, dazed monkey eyes careening around a pair of dirty red couches. Or are the couches blue?

Does it really matter?

-----

The scene: Center Camp in Black Rock City, the morning after the burn, the Man a sootstream of ash and hot air. The air is hungover with spirits. I pass a table. Someone hands me a rectangular lapel pin painted in watercolor, a constellation of red planets around the Man. He is drawn with a green neon glow, the same glow that was consumed with his giant wooden body.

Am I personifying the Man?

-----

Asking the wrong questions. Getting answers. You can never get the wrong answer. Who are you to know the answer you get is right?

You had to ask.

You did.

Everyone is always asking the wrong questions.

-----

On one side experience and on the antipodal side action. Everything is so fucking far away here.

I get an overwhelming urge to hand a poem to everyone I pass.

"They'll all throw them away," a friend of mine told me. "You have to do the best and expect the worst."

"But it's poetry."

"Someone's going to drop it somewhere. You don't want to make the problem easier. They'll hate you."

At Center Camp I lost the urge to publish: the girl who loved me yesterday had stood me up. I should have been writing poems about her. (Is this what I am doing now?)

A card table full of paper chapbooks changed my mind. Look at that, I thought, a world where anyone can do exactly what makes them happy.

How motherfucking hokey.

The best ideas always are, aren't they?

-----

The chapbook on the top of the stacks: "Self-Reliance" by Emerson.

Living writers be god-damned.

Emerson is dead. Long live Emerson.

-----

I am captured by the long held wish to hold someone. You are here, I feel, but we haven't met yet. When we do, we'll ask each other where we were that night, minutes away from each other, each on a separate trip, good for us. Jane Scarpantoni on cello, Lee Ranaldo on guitar. The words are in the air. You just have to read them.

Misery is the first verb every language avoids.

Ecstasy the first one we dive into.

-----

The dust like pigeons, everywhere, and you say scram. Your saint of riddles: you call him the patron of your wishes.

Everywhere the sky is blue and grey, the remnants of rain still up there, or is it just me?

-----

Capillary glass, the churning hot tubes of heat. Can you breathe like a bus? That's what it's like here.

Is that what you were doing, too? I can see your upstrokes and downstrokes, your arms in motion, the breath in and out, all before I know that's what you were doing.

-----

Why am I thinking of next year so clearly as the current year is happening?

Why is the future taking me out of the present?

Why am I seeing things, ponderous, wonderful things, and telling myself to do this and do that next year?

Is this even a decent line of questioning?

What do I mean?

The questions themselves are all ridiculous. They're not even close.

-----

I don't even have the words for the feeling, but I'm the guitar solo on Leonard Cohen's "Always".

I'm good booze over canned pineapples.

I'm wheat on a gorgeous green.

I'm the Nth metal.

Shiera would be proud.

-----

The bass here is a mercenary. I am thumped out of the only tree in town.

-----

I am part of the Nameless Formless.

Can I be any prouder?

-----

Tacks and canes, that's what your feet feel like they're on, and that's why I am rubbing the white and dust off your feet. The left one, especially, it seems, has lost the will to live. I feel genuinely scared. Do I call a ranger? You keep angling to get up, and I have to keep telling you: stay here. There's nothing out there for us. Which we know is a lie: everything here is for us. Who's kidding who?

-----

The questions aren't asking themselves.

-----

The questions aren't the right questions, and the answers can't be blamed for getting us off the track.

Revelation: experiential learning in the form of suggestions, series of suggestions. Vegetable answers.

This is not the cop-out you might think it is.

-----

The string quartet sees itself in the mirror and thinks it's absurd.

-----

What are you doing tonight? I'm not sure myself. We planned a group of us to go and see The Mutaytor, or something, but you know that these things, they just never work, especially if you are anything interested in keeping a schedule.

As I'm writing this I'm struck by words. 'Interested' starts with the letter I.

-----------------------------------------------

Glad to see we all made it back from Santa Barbara minds intact and all in love.

More to come.

Love to all in all amounts.

The closer we are to each other the closer we are to everyone else.