Tossing the Sticks

If it is getting colder, I am grateful

although I know that such a mercy won't stay,

because we've tossed the sticks.

We've tossed the sticks and now

we have to read them.

And I snapped those twigs in the night meadow.

I moved those rocks beneath the tent

and woke up raining.

Woke up sweating beneath spattering rain,

woke up from a terrible dream,

the stirring

of deep animal discomfort.

(Mosquitos will feed on the legs

of every lover. They always have

and always will.)

I scrape a scanty barrel these days,

these end days, although we all can agree

that it's always seemed like end days

to the species that invented apocalypse.

I will face this apocalypse with

my salty eyes.

And if I seem hard, it is because

I am hard. I am hardened. In time,

I've been shanked by a bone knife.

I very narrowly made out with my life.

In my strange dream,

there is no room for dead weight.

In my strange dream, I have

a hurricane lamp in my chest.

In my strange dream, I have

a hurricane lamp for a heart.  

A Meadow at Night

I am having the sensation

of a thing lost. 

A greater losing,

like losing a star,

it was small but 

the whole sky bereft is huge 

and aching. 

The pressure drags behind my eyes,

like calming a dog down 

before thunderstorm, 

autumnal pressure.

And meadows at night are still,

meadows at night are still meadows.

Somebody showed me a crystal ball

which reflected the world upside down. 

And it was beautiful that way, 

skewed vision, still a 

meadow at night.

I stuffed you with moss 

and all at once you were

alight and crackling.

Pull my nightgown above my head

as if it were night itself.

I will reveal the truer shape of things,

like daybreak. 

I'm only gnawing bones, anyway, 

only stitching lacerations,

only cradling bare feet like a broken

vestal, 

one that threw wide the doors 

and freed the sacrifice 

I Intend To

I Intend To

I intend to swim in that lake ringed with pines. The past is full of instances of swimming:

that indoor pool in the Highlands. Grinding on teenagers in Tamarindo, drinking cans of Cuba Libre in the back of sports utility vehicles bouncing along unpaved roads toward beaches, lace of secret rip tide.

I intend to. I never remember what I

did not do.

What I did not do does not exist,

only half-existed for a moment as shimmering hologram.

Intentions are just dreams, like dreams of cliffs.

All of the cliffs I've seen, those I want to see- those mirage cliffs in An Affair To Remember.

I've had many affairs to remember, many to forget.

There is no point in thinking of all the slightly flawed piano songs

I've known and cried and

the shuffle of shoes scuffing the ground, the limes, it's hard enough,

I do read the papers though, I am up on the news. I never meant to destroy love like a delicate bough.

I never meant to do all sorts of things.

We loved one another once, crumbling vista

cliff mirage we loved

one another once

I've only ever been able to conjure something childlike for the breaking night.

Only ever felt bone-loyal to the rain. I frighten of things. But

cliff mirage we loved one another once.

Not like a man or woman, but like a tiny world, palm-held,

precious as hummingbird.

I thought that I was found but

I am not found;

that was a dry fountain. That was a lovely basket-

held no water.

When I am fearless then I will be found.

And I will heap a pyre, watch it long hours.

Every intention will burn. Only what is

will remain

to transcend   

Beauty State

As of today, my book Beauty State has achieved full funding in pre-orders, via it's Kickstarter.

Pre-ordering will continue until the last day of the campaign. More pre-orders = a larger first pressing!

Ghost Rush

1.

I tried to find myself less lonely,

and to reckon with the world's swelling
wound and all that violence

we slept and the dog slept

between our bent legs,

like a sword

I always go back to the place
where I first knew
and first lost
my faith

I always go back to the place

where my self can be erased

just to rejoin the chorus
of the ghosts

2.

and cold water, warm water,
mine shaft, looking glass

oil of citronella, bug bite
on the thigh

I thought I wanted:

always do that,

I know my mind so little

I forget the uselessness
of trying to try

Don't give up on me as human or symbol. Try to forgive me as animal, please

I thrash in the water like a drowning spider, I float and stare at the sky

like a body, I yield, retract, concave, sigh

3.

The part of me that wishes most to disappear
only wishes to go somewhere I can be seen
by trees

solitude, I say to you,
oh grapple,

grapple with that.

Eat the grapes from the raw green vine,

eat the blackberries that aren't yet ready,
rain falls on the sweetpeas,
I know I'm very greedy,
I know that love awaits me
from behind

Shooting from the Hip

"Why dost thou wildly rush and roar,
 Mad River, O Mad River?"

I.


Do you know what is funny?

What is funny in heaps
of quartz, or
heaps of pyrite,

I found it all so funny under the
noon sun, so funny beneath the pine heat,
the Sierra summer.

(Laughed hard, knew life. Life in gradiants,
we crumble and intuit)

(Do you know what is funny I say
it all is.)

II.


And I buckle under unwavering stares like
the river,

true arrows-
there is a difference between youth brave and
grown brave-

you have grown brave-
you there, have grown brave:

find the gentle body of bones, all
heaps of quartz and humble
stone, take it into your bed
of rock,

take it into your flannel dreams.

Dream of all of the ones that were here then,
there then. We are the ones that are here now.

And Ian could not sleep for all the thinking.
In the dark and heat, and beneath July,
he was many things.

III.


I will write a tiny book, and in it
I will say:

I have all the beauty of the lost den

I have all the ashes of the night sky,
I have the smudge of memory,

of eyes

Untitled

I don't know why I'm reading another book
about a murder.

(I have been listening to Satie because I am
so lost.)

I found the book on the shelf
in the parlor room
of a childhood house, all
polished up
to be sold

to the future.

And you
make me write a poem.

I could write
about how I fantasize
a dark hot armpit

(“I will Never Leave.”)

I could write about dried plums and figs
which spell murder. Could write about children
walking out into the night sand

then gone as
chaff in the breeze.

I could tell you about the way that
your physicality is not my physicality,
about how I do not touch a body
that is not mine,

about how much I value very small things,
pieces of chocolate,
strips of paper.

I could tell you that I am never pretending
when I say that I would leave abruptly, headed

just toward
the notion of a dream.

I am too brave for this world.