I put this moment

here. 

i put this moment

here. 

i put this moment 

here.

i put this moment

over here! 

over here!

Sin in my heart: the photos.

fever playlist

here's something brian said today that i decided to remember:

"put yr undies in the laundry, go commando to lunch, eat yr sad away."


here are three songs to listen to when you have a high fever:
"watching you without me"
"hello earth"
and "the morning fog"
all off of the hounds of love by kate bush. guaranteed to make you feel lots of very strange things.

i wonder if i could

i wonder if i could remember the thoughts i've thought today
as i drove up san pablo with my wavering brain and fever queries

i told myself many things, like:

you do, you do assume,
you do assume to know things
about the people that you love,
you sweep them from the dusty ground
and appraise the grime

and,

you do, you do always get what you want,
and in fact you always have,
generally at unexpected times and never
just the way you want it,
yet you get it, this is a strange
thread

i also thought:

maybe the fever is not a fever, and just
dissociation in my head
maybe i am not sick
(it is hard to tell between the daily klonopin
and pyridium what is really going on)
maybe i just have a back ache from the way
that i'm sitting--
maybe the infection's not reaching my kidneys,
maybe i can make it to monday, call dr levinsky,
cant afford the e.r. again


maybe i'll fall asleep in L's arms watching Dr. Zhivago
maybe he'll turn to me with the sweetness that he keeps in reserve
maybe we will listen to our album and i won't need to cry
maybe we'll just laugh a little and touch foreheads
and go to sleep tonight


maybe i'll fall asleep alone tonight-- maybe sometime soon,
maybe i'll wake up and feel rested, maybe light
maybe i'll fall asleep alone tonight


maybe i'm falling asleep right now



baby, i've been dreaming--


i've been dreaming for a week 


i dream when your body is pressed behind mine
i dream when i have my bed to myself
i dream in your bed with the cat at our feet
i dream of you




i wonder when i'll start dreaming of my future




my future


the girl's going places


he says


pressing his thumbs into the knots in my shoulders
until i cry out in pain, try not to cry
the girl's going places


it is hard to imagine when all i can remember
is going going
down on you, going beneath the covers,
going to your house at three in the morning
and knocking on your window,
going pee in that tiny closet of a bathroom,
going crazy,
going to your house and
your house and your house

and oolong and jars of water
and my hands in the hair of your chest
and facing you
and facing the wall
and facing the screen
the shot of the balalaika
so beautiful


baby, i've been dreaming--

i found my underwear

                                                                                                thank god

i am excited about this book.

sweet marilyn monroe

sometimes i want to say (stupid
young things like): 

you don't 
know what it's like to be a; 

won't 
you try to _____, ______
or ______; but mostly



i don't always agree with you. 

i don't always agree with you. 

i don't always agree with you. 

I DON'T ALWAYS AGREE WITH YOU. 


these are variations 
on a swallowed temptation 
to say


you're wrong. 

Flex Sig

1. 


everything you need to know 
about who i am is 
printed on paper and looped around my wrist.

2.


take it home: free socks; a box of 
apple juice; lubrication sliding down 
my legs; a photograph of my ________

3.

the aftermath looks like this: 

4.
  
turned into its own poem.    

  

i had a feeling that was going to happen.


did you?


i don't know.

Charlie

Rock 'N' Roll

 WE ARE SO ROCK N' ROLL.

a+d

i feel like if david lynch met me he would agree that we would be an incendiary couple.

note:

ENJOY YOURSELF


IT'S LATER THAN YOU THINK. 

people keep talking about lou and metallica but i'm stuck on lou covering this magic moment.

History of Lovers Needed an Update

History of Lovers needed a few things.

An update or ten of new poems.

It also needed to look different.

It also needed to start including pictures and music.

Don't worry I'm on it.

for branwell

This is the story:

From gullet to belly you were

sogging wool and wet ash,
indigenous teeth,
frenetic haste

a twist in your spindle core.

It was the
water, nothing more,
perhaps more than that,

perfunctory, lung-colored,
running noxious from the graves
which scarred the churchyard:

All Dead, and All
Dead,

drinking the flesh and the
dirt of the dead.

This is the story of You.
Candle-wax drunk, with
opium mouth,

Embarrassment (from the dissenting
chorus) and embarrassed

for yourself.

In eighteen forty-three:

her resolve decomposed,

Lydia removed every
trapping of clothes
to bury her nose in your armpit.

You knew
a brief reprieve.

Murmured later:

Reports that she
did not speak,
for some roaringly silent days
or weeks she feared

that her voice would betray your hovering mouth.

You were not born Catholic.
You dreamt her husband slipped
and broke his neck.

You were not born secular.
She sent you money in envelope,
unkissed, impassive.

You broke

sheltered by the beams
of your bed.

A string snapped in your

consumptive chest.

You died without seeing,
through your nebulous vision,
the future.

I cover the waterfront,
baby, I hobble
and trip.

These heavy
grey days resemble only
some songs.

And the starless sky
with its cold white moon
sprawls still.

Untitled


Slumped against the window may I, oh please, watch snow,
and question nothing, but feel a woolen and a vapid,
languid bliss?

I have written love letters but have never sent a-one.

And as it falls, slow as velvet moth, and where
it lies, at rest, as my body will lie, heavy and light
in its stasis,

may I turn crackling as prodded the log in the fire,
may I spill easy as the liquor gone to vinegar on
the shelf, for me, will you do this, do this?

Stir clockwise my aging spirits, breathe me to
flush with the bellows,

lay a cheek to my womb, as well you know

a woman will grow threadbare, beg darning,
cure ills, set fractures, accept a hand of warmth,
acquiesce a weary truth

courtesy dullin thomas

this poem was written by stitching together words from my anthology of poems by dylan 'dullin' thomas. here he is with his fiery caitlyn, probably immediately before/after a huge row:

When a star cries flesh
to ribs and neck
blood in sun, a weather


bad coin palmed desireless


cunning bottlecork enemies


silly cotton
sea-dandy
lies down bloodily
bowed


luminous intimacies:
runaway-Queen-Katherine
hymning chapel thighs

labour and love
were a hedgerow of simple Jacks

dumb to tell the lover’s sheet
the word of the flesh
the flask of brother’s blood
broken things of light
undone pain a process


into a great flood.

Love Letter

Expect thunder
and oysters,
expect rheumatic gloom,
you wistful loving
head-full-of-wool,
you woman of stockings
and womb, may I

might I? Bury my pug
freckled nose in your sweater,
I will be your dolly warm
lipped and with

blue veins a meandering
topography.

And of your
little leather shoes,
eyes of cracking ice,
hay-hair and
round bell cheeks

I wooze and plummet.

i would, i would, if welcome i was, for they loathe me every one.




uncannily clear his eyes and ever
will be his hands a particular
quick clean

sadness which speaks through strings

and it is greatly
and much
as it was

reeds
yellowing scum
wool yarn tied
at the pond

sealed now with hardened wax
trapped
in sap

theirs are years dissolved as
honey hers in a dust blue house his

in what is his

sanctified enough for
both of them torn
far from candle and a
ouija board

wicked thoughtless faith
one pays in pain

now smell the struck
match measure
the heft of the hematite

turn the looming
latch crawl into the night

crouch

beneath blankets a petrified spider

stare in terror at your chest with
maddening mistrust
do not expect

that it will reign gently just and
such and such

heed scrawl on an
apple's parchment skin
browning bloody curl

do not defect

not for the world

a poison blows from the
bellows leaned
lazy at hearth
 
below the cupboard of
liquors ageless and

acid with sorrow

Canada

To little
girls they attempt to teach grace from
an early age. Lips sticky with the wax of
fake orgasms. Roses upon completion of display.

If your bedroom
is your mind, do you mind?
If you mind, mayhap you
should rearrange.

On application of the hypothetical
law, mine is a Persian rug of
mockingbirds, seven bared
breasts. Memories

are flecks of silver and
light caught in a lens,
only the past is material,
tell me where it all went wrong.

Tell the heap of flannel in my chest
how it could win Helena. Whisper
to my tires that they will reach Canada.
I fell into a love for her.

If my bedroom is my mind:
(I note the absence of Helena.
Tentatively, surely,
she must appear.)

For now I nurse a nausea,
track a pulse in my thigh.
Rain came. An acid bramble
bloomed in my stomach.

I dreamt of
free fall.
Death was imminent until
the river.

Of little
girls little is expected. Sex speaks
a language in time.
They find they are fluent.

Tell them where it all went wrong.
Whisper to their tires
that they will
reach Canada.

stay the course

if you ever get lonesome
and you're down in san antone
just beg, steal or borrow
two nickels or a dime
and call me on the phone

i'll meet you at the alamo mission
and we will say our prayers
the holy ghost and the virgin mother
will heal us, as we kneel there

in the midnight moonlight, the 
midnight moonlight, midnight.
in the midnight moonlight, the
midnight moonlight,
midnight

if you ever feel sorrow
for deeds that you have done
with no hope for tomorrow
in the setting of the sun
and the oceans are howlin'
for things that might have been
and the last good morning sunrise will be
the brightest you've ever seen.

in the midnight moonlight, the 
midnight moonlight, midnight.
in the midnight moonlight, the
midnight moonlight,
midnight.

with crickets

directly applying salt to a belly wound
every night. measuring the sting.
oh all i have known.

tired accidental daughter of a
couple in love peers at the
sky a charcoal smudge.

i shall not limit myself.
i've seen what that does to
limbs, cramped,

seen what that does to
turtles in tanks and
sad sun-deprived succulents.

we both got sober
without
the other knowing.

i could not kill
the child, she was too sweet.
only one alternative.

roll the pewter
boulder off of her chest.
breathe into her lungs,

squeeze blood from between
her legs, give her fifteen lovers and
three friends.

no mama problems
here, red guitar, i've
been talking to God.

dreaming of forsaken
eucalyptus trees swaying beneath me
like shifting balance beams.

i feel like snake with a new skin,
shuddering rapture faint and
almost-glossolalia


like alone in my nightie embracing
my bed, the child again but
this time whole-

my love does sing with crickets all
the night long.

dreamcatcher

now that i know i will be leaving, i can see
oakland.
there's a lot of cement. broken
glass and tire stores. i
see myself most sharply maybe
at the gas station across the street
from my house, its sweet
stray tom with the gnawed ears
and those cashiers that don't
leave me alone.

the dishes have been piling up
for a week. when i see them i sing
i'm guilty, baby i'm guilty, to myself like
randy newman. i just dread the scum.
i hide in my room, on my belly, like a
fat snake in a hole and stare
at my dreamcatcher.

i burn a stick of incense and the thumb
of white sage justin gave to me.
i think i most likely wont ever find jesus,
but i guess if i do he'll understand
what took me so long.
more likely i'll find some porous
red rocks, a river, a tree with
needles to bleed for.

i can't wait to get the hell out of here.
i don't care much where i go as long as
it's somewhere i've never been in my life.
kept myself from the mud for too long,
the city is not my favorite color or
anywhere close.

today at the warehouse i read poems
on the sly and felt like i was stripping my
employers of a resource.
then i laughed. i was so happy
to learn that you can write poems
about anything at all.

after the apocalypse

listening to leonard cohen 'coming back to you.'






the room is cold. when you were here 
when you were here
well, you were here


my bed was made so neatly 
sweet slim fingers beseeching 
all the wrinkles from the sheets


now i'm slumped. on the bare 
mattress and the shawl does keep
the naked body warm


only the shawl to keep
the naked body warm. the aftermath
of the apocalypse 


amounts to twenty six ounces of salt
twelve ounces of honey and i don't really 
care what they say,


the box was between pandora's legs
the box was between pandora's legs
all along


and i don't really
care what you think, 
it's my box 


it's my box 
and what you thought of me 
when you loved me less


than most of the time
was probably 
true.

most recently i have thought:

1. 
There was not music to them all, or perhaps there was. Some strange discordant song (of whale?) for every ribbon of flotsam drawn ashore by the tide. Some ending in silence. Some in earthly echoes.

He knew the ancient composition of sand. It brought him closer, maybe, to its song. Off to Singapore now.


One of the gods was appeased that morning, or two. 








2. 
No one wants to give away the thing they love. I've only known one person who has, a woman. I can not speak for her.






3. 
It became apparent that there was something wild within her. That someday, she would need a lover who also possessed the wildness, that fluid. 


"You're going to sleep in your jewelry?" he asked. 

Portia

Portia coughed the ashes up and
she rose again


every sorrow which had rendered her
leaden veined


blew heedless in the wind, dissembled.


The map of grief was gone, there was no
destination


the door shut on the cartographer wielding
exhausted vellum


and she slept two days on that embroidered pillow.


Having eaten and been
swallowed by death


Some things seemed small,
now


nothing colossal as a kiss on the arm,


as finally something sweet on the tongue,


as blue as new day,


these the gods.

holding you through the apocalypse

we're giving it some careful thought. 
earl grey afternoons and i sleep in late.
i found a new chamber within my chest 
just beneath my heart 
it houses the part of me that is 
railing against the tide which tugs
all of these natural disasters 
into action.


holding you are holding me through
the apocalypse. 
i'm gazing impotently at this cartouche 
its inscrutable hieroglyphs 
could be thick on the tongue 
like a lead coin or smoke 
like the ashes in Portia's throat.


i am knitting a shawl to keep 
the naked body warm. 
once i spoke of a jaundiced mind
as if it were not mine.
i was simply in wait.


Shiva moves in her sleep.
for nourishment I have chiefly been
choosing olives dusky purple and black as 
leaking tar. fermented tea. i do feel
like Portia some times.


i think that a facet within me 
longs to move like a shadow
but i am cumbersome flesh and heavy hair.
i can nearly hear a distant vacuum 
some moments,


when i am alone.
yet you are
holding i am holding you through 
the apocalypse. on this bed.
if ever i am sought 
there i'll be. 

If You Cant Let Go

Just Don't Hang On.

Summer makes me think of summers, summers.

But then, long life, will you let me in? 

And then, slow heart, are you gonna know him? 

Summer makes me think of summers, summers. 

Outside the air pants heavily of grease black nights. I walk and walk but can’t stay ahead of its slur, once conspiratorial, now lisping-- remember remember-- remember as if I could forget.I didn’t have any secrets when my mouth was opiate slack, they all spilled forth like so many scarabs, left a cough of sand and resin in their wake. I thought that my body was the only oasis even as I drenched its dried corpse with wine, to keep it from sloughing away. 

Now my secrets are ants beneath a magnifying glass as heat congeals the day. 

song to the siren

On the floating, shipless, oceans
I did all my best to smile
til your singing eyes and fingers
drew me loving into your eyes.
And you sang "Sail to me, sail to me,
Let me enfold you."
Here I am, here I am
waiting to hold you.

Did I dream you dreamed about me?
Were you here when I was full sail?
Now my foolish boat is leaning,
broken lovelorn on your rocks.
For you sang "Touch me not, touch me not,
Come back tomorrow."
Oh my heart, oh my heart shies from the sorrow.

I'm as puzzled as a newborn child.
I'm as riddled as the tide.
Should I stand amid the breakers?
Or shall I lie with death my bride?
Here me sing: "Swim to me, swim to me,
Let me enfold you."

Here I am, Here I am, waiting to hold you." 

am e d

where did you go i needed you
where was i when you needed me

looking around isn't yielding anything
but fat for the flames

save myself some time and decide if i want you
could you stand in the silence when it doesn't feel all right

i never expected to but i caught you
someone gave me the keys to the night

dm am e

oh antony it's not you it's me
i'll be the end of me

oh antony i've got a theory

am e

it only takes one asp to thrill me

am e

i'm so afraid kindness might kill me

listening to brian eno 'the big ship', 'i think it's going to rain today' randy newman, and 'jolene' ray lamontagne.

trouble river trouble troubled mind
sometimes i think hey
i made it

then become so confused
because i can't remember
if i took my pills today

all of my friends, they're
so good to me,
they know

allison doesn't remember.
and all of my friends, they're
so good to me, when i trip
up and break

because i remember.
it sounds like the dead grey dissonance.
i remember remember some

trouble river trouble troubled times.
got troubled times on my mind.
maybe it's too late

for me hon it might not do any good.
it might be you should take off like a shot
in the direction from which you came.

for years i thought that
i knew what i wanted but
i dont want to show you my broken face.

here i am feeling sorry for my self,
put that old volume back on the shelf.
it's trite as magazine trash

and it's goddamn old news.
but i guess pretty
baby i just haven't got booze

and all the bull shit's dissipated
that i used to hold on to
and now it's just me and over there it's just you

two tin cans and one long piece of string.

i feel perpetual

listening to: cocteau twins 'wolf in the breast'

The nauseous fire is awake. It courses down my limp limbs.

I used to speak of rattling like a pinball machine. 

Now my shaking is quiet but 

Like a wind irrepressible and pervasive. 

“I feel perpetual. I feel perpetual.”

I told him of the comfort that I find in the feeling

Of knowing, that one day

A dog will be running over my grave.

I cannot tell you what is going on in the world. But
 The smell of pines and rain. 

A cave of cold water and red earth.

Reaching the sun. 

The shaking settles. 

I fell asleep like a child,

In Grandma’s bed, some 

Things do change.

And in the aqueous blackness

Of night 

“I feel perpetual.” 

Breathe easy. 

'damn you, girl, if i wanna fantasize, that's my problem.'

katebushalldayeveryday

When I was a child
Running in the night
Afraid of what might be
Hiding in the dark
Hiding in the street
And of what was following me

Now hounds of love are hunting
I've always been a coward
And I don't know what's good for me

Here I go
It's coming for me through the trees
Help me, someone
Help me, please
Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake
And I'll be two steps on the water

I found a fox caught by dogs
He let me take him in my hands
His little heart it beats so fast
And I'm ashamed of running away
From nothing real
I just can't deal with this
But I'm still afraid to be there

Among your hounds of love
And feel your arms surround me
I've always been a coward
And never know what's good for me

Here I go
Don't let me go
Hold me down
It's coming for me through the trees
Help me, darling
Help me, please
Take my shoes off and throw them in the lake
And I'll be two steps on the water

I don't know what's good for me
I don't know what's good for me
I need your love

Take your shoes off and throw them in the lake

Do you know what I really need?
Do you know what I really need?
I need love

the mind keeps me down

'i did my best, it wasn't much.
i couldn't feel, so i tried to touch.
i told the truth, i didn't come to fool ye.
and even though it all went wrong,
i'll stand before the lord of song
with nothing on my tongue
but hallelujah.'

lc





when the front door slams that way i just
grow frightful. been spending too much time in my bed.
the mind thinks the body is sick. the body thinks as much
of the mind. the willows ripple. i don't

know what i'm doing to myself. but i've done it before
and before that. i just never stitch together a word for it.
i could put on my white slippers and kindle the kettle and
call it a day done

i think i'd rather go out to dance but when the front door slams
that way i just grow frightful. ought to know by now a lot
of things by now i ought to know. and the body does
the mind just keeps me down

but i love you helen of troy

yesterday i kicked the door open
and now it swings like a broken arm

i do not think of what i have not
i do not think of what i have

i suppose i have not a drink.
i have not got a drink and god

damn it if it doesn't sing to me sweetly
of its taste that helen

of troy. i suppose i have not got
helen of troy though i dream of her breast in the cage of my hand

and when i see her sometimes i see her--
helen of troy and i want to swear at the stars and get

mad but i turn it inside to curdle,  the milk of my long
lethargic sadness.

yet i have this window big window and beyond it
flowers nosebleed bright

i have this little grey cat sleeping silently beside me
and ginger in my mouth

it's a sweet thing my anonymous mama says
a good thing, al, indeed

that helen of troy reminds you that your heart is
just barely stirring, waking

seethe for her eyes and weep for the cruelty of it
stretch our your wrists and commence to embrace the snake pit

you are splayed on the ground you are already leaving your
pyre is lit

and just as for helen surely for you
it awaits

untitled 4-23-11

The tangerine tree trembles, its white blossoms

Shake with uncertain shyness, young women 

Frightened that they bloomed too soon. 

When I arrived here, I thought,

I am concentrating on all the wrong things.

Meant to be writing a piece of analysis dry as dust.

And instead-- 

The meat of olives.

Pungent as a memory that only the body can recall.

Cumquat juice slipping down swollen fingers.

How, there is no other word for alone.

Not really.

A rippling purple iris caught in the lens of the sun.

Exhausted straw hats, terra cotta water jugs.

A fish made of bronze in a chalky fountain.

A painted quail. 

Soft cats roll their clean fur in the baked dirt. 

The photo of Joanna at the beach. 

And tonight,  the 

‘Best Dessert This Side of the Mississipi’ 

After crawfish, red potatoes, a filet. 

The blankets here are really shawls 

To wear around your shoulders.

I have danced beneath my kaftan.

Listened to a song about smoke and ashes.

Collected more Durrell volumes.

Seen my father’s eyes

As Louis sang “What a Wonderful World”

And every time he did,

We raised our glasses.

mexican blanket 4.16.11

once buried beneath 
sand six feet deep 


(now uncovered within)
resides an unruly beast


eyes as sharp as hunting knives
and bared snaggle-teeth


i fantasize of nights 
jarring hot and black


imagine incisors 
lacerating lazy hands


and the quick blade of fact
tested my bloody lip


it did not find me wanting
lashes lowered and words slipped


from the mouth of the creature
that never whispered its existence 


until new and clear-eyed 'neath
my mexican blanket she stirred

justine

have been reading 'justine', the first of the alexandria quartet by lawrence durrell. it is a Great book. the imagery and stream of consciousness style reminds me of michael ondaatje's 'the english patient', my favorite novel. this box set is the same one my dad has. inarguably the most pleasing in design.




"'It will puzzle you when I tell you that I thought Justine great, in a sort of way. There are forms of greatness, you know, which when not applied in art or religion make havoc of ordinary life. Her gift was misapplied in being directed towards love. Certainly she was bad in many ways, but they were all small ways. Nor can I say she harmed nobody. But those she harmed most she made fruitful. She expelled people from their old selves. It was bound to hurt, and many mistook the nature she inflicted. Not I.' And smiling his well-known smile, in which sweetness was mixed with an inexpressible bitterness, he repeated softly under his breath the words: 'Not I.'"

Might Be Pure

Bleeding fingers picking limes
from the pliant green boughs of the tree

We have spent so many hours filling the
divide, ocean-wide, with words

Rain tumbled into the fountain, I said
I would dip my feet in it so your dreams

Might be pure, and I merely slept
but it was as if it were

And there is something -- something
which I cradle like grapes in my hand

Something which I carry
like a child on my back

Indefatigable baby boy,
in lieu of leisure, faced with facts

And all of the pleasure which rendered me
static and slack

Is part now of the soundless
choreography of the past

Nothing evades me
my truth simply does not contain that

Simplicity. My body contemplates,
bleeding fingers offer palms and ask

If we have faith
in faith this time or ever

in fact

I wonder if it will always be such a struggle for me,
to understand the nature of love

Its pear-shaped progression, starting gentle and slim
and confounding us when we see

That it has swollen as we slept into a globe
more whole than we perceive, a world of its own

That though inept,
we cannot truly call ourselves alone

Accepting a mantle of freedom which is not ours in fact
Every Movement of our hand touches someone

EXHAUSTED POEME

My senses attempt to coexist
they throw themselves impassioned into the melee
at once the ceramic lamp the book unfolded like a tulip
the sweet cold drink of juice in its glass (she says
the sugar will help) and

Your piano song but before that the recorded
scuff of the bench being pulled beneath you
you sit at the piano and play  the song with its
one beautiful false note at the end which makes me
laugh as I cry

I told you that I might dissolve
into a heap of salt and meant truly that
the fabric of me that incorporeal stuff of me
is exhausted darling and I do contemplate
a piece of peace

A heap of salt an old grey silk
shirt will be left rainwet and flapping
feebling in the March-wind respectively
we could simply lay as I now lay and be
in the same room

And the burden of what I must tell them
makes other things seem easy
(to tell my old lover that I will no longer
be his lover that my touch is gone
as leaves in a breeze)

The burden of what I now know
lends a marked clarity to the scene and its absurdities
what vehement gestures my hands have made
over bodies threaded with
loveless veins

Now exhausted I struggled for strength
against a named nemesis
the heap of salt will be borne aloft
like the notes of your piano by the March-wind
we could simply lay as I now lay





thanks for listening guys