for a barrow

i've been hoarding silver
to bury in a barrow

i've been hoarding silver
and pottery, and wax

but in time which is now past i thought
to be drained of blood, so practical

just a handmaid--

just a handmaid to be buried in his barrow

that in the death life
i could serve him

as i served him in this life
my death body open as a rose

my death mouth full of
sweet, soft words

of reassurances
"Yours is a lovely barrow"

"You are beautiful in death,
 more so even than in life"

a nurse
concubine

never handfast or loved

but i've been hoarding silver
to bury in a barrow

and like a morel which one day
sprung from the soil

or a morning i never expected

i came to know that i would rather
collapse to bones in my own

than to rot in his
after drinking the draught

inscribed with his name
by his own hand

Amanita Muscaria

Amanita m.

Had I been a doe,
a reindoe,

I might have been whispered to, 
kissed, doted upon
by you,
Trojgaard,

without having become

so very sick.

Soft amanita,
I could not resist,
I was so hungry,
so desirous,

my teeth sharp against my tongue
twinged for your flesh,

the roiling wave of your truth so

shaky, poisonous.

And while I torque with yearning
for the gap in your bite

and listen to the hiss of the wind
for your lisp

I am weak, sweating
curled nauseous

newly born and anemic,
bruised from pelvis to heels,

freed to writhe

against daylight.

Heart of Thorns

samskeyti

samskeyti

how many scarves would it take to cover
every inch of my bare skin

how long to cook the rice, for the kettle to boil,
how long until

the sky ages unto darkness

and am i dooming myself with owls? superstitious, the stitches
which are mine,
mine seams

in the center, at the depth
of its twinging marrow

love is all good

behind walls of calcification
like kaspar’s room,

but

with a window

jesus was a crossmaker / dear emily

"either road's lookin' grim"



dear emily i was in the sun today, it beat
like a quickened heart, there was a swing

and it hung crooked from a tree

my body wants to cry.

it is sick, my head is sick, there is a pain
and it hurts so much, (could) crying,
release it,

"i am as puzzled as a newborn child.
i am as riddled as the tide."

nothing has been the same since--
this and that.

everything is quite confused
and much so very strange

and much so very heavy
and i'm awfully ill, tried to lie

in the dark

but there was no dark,

where on earth can i hide from
inevitability 

earthly unearthly

a body of flesh

corporeal,
among black trees

the sky is clear,
white stars, the white of time

in deep night the ravine is earthly,
unearthly, the crawling capillaries, the trees' ghost fingers
dissolving into an inscrutable
black pool

eyes cannot make it out

further into the
day ravine
is a necessity

to know it, a little,
a little as it knows so well.

further into the
night ravine
is a dark dense place

in my mind

full of earthly stones and

moss and branch rendered unearthly

by the sprawling flood
of light's absence

a new kind of baptism

i do not think that it was accomplished, by
splashing into the sound late at night, naked,
watched and then held by a stranger

Washington, it needs to be --
just you and me.
Green ravine, it needs to be--
just you and me.

Infinite flannel of moss,
just you and me.

Just you and me and maybe Luke.

"You will say that I am not Robin the Hood,
but how could I hide, from top to foot,
that I lost something in the hills?
I lost something in the hills."

we the smart ones we are stupid
we've been told for so long that we are smart
i wish we had been told that we were loved

i wish we had been told that we were loved

being smart is not a root or a home or a friend
it seems to me a very cheap gift, widely given
accompanied by sorrow, loneliness, and hate

it hurts me

I can watch a moth, I can watch the cat, watching the moth
I can find the steps where no one is sitting and sit on them
I can chain smoke cigarettes and spit and no one will see me
I can try to listen to the rain as it falls on the leaves
I can try to listen to the rain as it falls faster and
faster as if it is going somewhere

I don't feel strong and I do feel ashamed
I don't feel strong and I do feel
I do feel as if I am

not growing I do feel as if I am not learning
I do feel as if I am perpetuating the things which I do
which I wish I did not do and
do not want to do

I do feel alone and I do want to be alone and
more than anything I want to be content with my own self
by myself

I'm supposed to be married to myself and I do feel as if
I am still looking for a lover to make happy, someone
that I could make happy, I do feel as if I am looking
for someone to make me happy

If this incessant spattering of disappointments is growth
it hurts and I do feel hurt and I do hurt, it hurts me,
it hurts so familiar, so dull and gray and dumb,
i don't know where i was and i don't know where i have come to,

we the smart ones we are stupid
we've been told for so long that we are smart
i wish we had been told that we were loved

i wish we had been told that we were loved
so much, i wish that.

i spit

i was so sad. only my most
choice sweet dark organs were tethered with
blue yarn and i could not trace
its beginning, could not find its end

and had no knife to saw it all ragged
away

i was so angry. in my prettiest yellow dress
i was cruelty wrapped like a half-gift.
i was so angry.

i don't want to be your lover. if this is what
it feels like to be your lover i don't want to,
why would i want to, i only have a taste
for sweet pain, this bitter vile
horseradish pain, i choke it back up

i spit it onto your chest

i don't want to be your lover, it's like
bleach on the scalp, it feels stupid.

i don't want to feel stupid anymore.

there is an eagle in the tree.
thick and winged.

why should i love you.

like a false prophet
you were manufactured by a group of men
overseen by a group of men
the approving nods of the heads of men

i choke it back up, i spit it onto your chest

i choke up this vapidity and spit it onto your chest

if we are all worth our weight in shit
you're just more shit than me

poem for my friend

so you do not collect bones anymore,
they are heavy, take up space, you long
to take up less space, you

are long, long arms, long legs,
take up much space, your body
it is good

it is a good body, i think that
and i think that your heart is good, too,
and your tongue is thick

with amusing vernacular,
you're a good friend, good our drives,
and our days, i like them.

relent

relent relent your attempts are going nowhere
relent relent dont you know that women are just too unclean

don't touch me

relent relent don't you know that women are just too unclean
relent relent can't you read the smoke which bears the nicotine

i want to be alone
i want to be alone

leave me alone
leave me alone
leave me alone
please please please

Julian From Far Away

Julian From Far Away

Dear Julian your silence is so reliable, I can lean back on it,
it reverberates against my muscles, and I know
you are alive.

Dear Julian I tried to look different but I can’t. I am dark my
color is dark, the time you said,

black is the color of my true luve’s hair, and you weren’t talking
about me, but you weren’t talking about anyone, and black is the color of my hair too, so it didn’t matter.

Dear Julian if you ever stop being my baby I’ll be right shocked.

Dear Julian you never listened to a fucking thing I ever said.

Dear Julian it is hard to watch Bergman without you, and damn you, and damn you, you bled onto me, there's too much love.

Dear Julian I am very happy here and very far away from you and it feels perfectly right and quite, but like a balloon which escaped and rises out of sight, my love for you does not deflate. My love for you is a yellow yellow sun. My love for you is a flea, insistent, hard to kill, even when you crush me.

Dear Julian Vera killed a mouse. Dear Julian Deenie killed a daffodil.

Dear Julian I hung the bunny up. It said to Allison and it said your name and I kept thinking, “The line it is drawn,” and my heart felt like crying, but my rivers run dry.

Dear Julian I miss your sleeping body. My sleep was never your song. But your sleep was mine.

Dear Julian please, don’t censor me. Nobody will read this anyway.

Ostara

Little White Flowers in a Bowl of Blood

Mab

How to make love to the earth?
I need to. Imperative.

To say that I am here, a visitor,
sure, we nomadic
animals we roam

I have a firm and painful spider-
bite, in this way, am
perhaps initiated,
perhaps slightly,

but How to make love to the earth.
It is not enough-- walking around in shoes,
barricaded from the rain by wool.

Burning the wood.

Mab says take off all clothing, rely
on the mammalian warmth, my blood is hot,
after all, it is, my womb is a nest
at the end of a tunnel,

Mab says rely on this.

Spread your white legs to the cold,
it is not so cold, as all that,

let your knees fall slack and angled,
like arrows pointing west and east,

Mab says.

i feel old

we must be quiet, mostly still
light the green candles, it is as if --

you are a child and i am a crone

it is as if i was left beneath the yew,
like something lost,
a little handkerchief,

a worn, sad, blue

no one can make whole the body
of the old. it is a spent body, cannot
reclaim what it once had and gave away,
what was taken, or what left it for a new
vista, other arms.

the morrigan washes my dress of rags,
her ravens perched on her shoulders, her bloody hair.

you do not appear in her vision.
not laughing, and smoking, and all that you do.

you are a child.

and it is beautiful for me to see.

envy seizes in my shoulders and neck,
is it apparent,
 
i want to be light

like you

light like the watery sun
that reflects off of your thin-boy's chest

i feel old

curiouser and curiouser