There is No Home

my life is channels of what i can survive 

a song composed of loneliness

all of this searching when you know 

you have to leave empty handed 

without sound, we watch love fold up like a wave

& crash into memory, how can you believe in what doesn’t hold

madness was just thinking you have a say 

you are an image viewed from very far away 

soft & out of focus

i am the silence that comes when i run out of language

to keep me safe 

if you can’t find your way out of a city 

is that the failure you churn into love 

& how many times will you tie yourself to a sinking ship

telling yourself being unmoored is worse

than drowning 

just about anyone can take you on a roof and make promises

they’ll never keep

you’ve heard this song a thousand times & the lyrics never change 

Snow Moon

New Orleans is a shipwreck masquerading as a city

it hovers, horizon of worn time

i would lay down in fields of warm settings & if the moon

says i need you, cresting the rooftops of abandon 

where we travel to be able to breathe & below sea level still

high enough up & you can see the whole bend in the river

ghost barges stirring up February fog round the edges of their cut paths

call & response from the next roof over, we’re all out here leaving 

something behind, write my name on it for a lifetime, for this life 

folded into you, the way some of us get left out of the picture 

crosses the choice that some of us leave on our own if love

isn’t what you think it is: You’ll never be as free as when 

you let go of all you think you’ve learned here

asphalt shingles held us to a gripping, if you want to be inside me

under that full moon, we need to be high enough 

that i can see my city, the way i tied my life to her

the way i could come up under her, a rushing of water

is where my life spooled out, a rushing of wanting to feel everything 

there are types of desire that undo you, then there are types of wanting 

that carry you far enough to find them— some of us live in the interstices 

knowing all of this is temporary, steal what you can carry  

plunder the rest 

CRUMBS

For those that think they are monstrous, i speak for you

Uncanny we wade, so water a trembling sign for will you

                 uncaring in outcomes but i did want to be shattered 

You can’t have everything and they mean it when you find 

Having traveled far to seek some answers you end up inside the box 

                  Tell me what your wish is, little girl 

We have to suspend belief that beauty can love such horror show

But, birdy, we fly don’t we, when loved, when you get to be one

                  of the lucky ones 

You have to remember we come from this island of misfit 

It’s not like you can just locate New Orleans on a map 

                   inside you there is this breaking that never ends

I thought you could see me in all of this mess, inside this chaos

I fell a victim to this dream, that you spoke the words i choose 

                   Too and listen, little echo, little warbling chest space 

All my life has been less than, and less than that to hold on to

Try to bargain even now, let it be this last time to get it right somehow 

                   that merry go round moving so fast and you think what 

Is real in a movie about our future selves, plastic trinkets pawned to history 

We of the B sides, the news bytes, the recycling data of gossip 

                   Tell me what am i surviving since love is off the table 

Whatever darkness darkens, and i am there. Wherever fate is forgotten, waves

Lap from memory and it is a thing they do, like us continuing, as if we should

                    Time takes us anyway so what matter you chose never to try 

Is it true, if no one wants to hold on to you

You fly away, in one’s city, broken apart, is it true really

                     That you never really cared at all if i was here with you 

        

 

Stand Closer

 

i bet this place is a bone silent whistling 

under stars, the vowels of time, a constant 

we made it this far but not very far from where we started

from up there, the horizon is a tone less 

like i sd, we’re going the wrong way driving away from it

every poem is a trying to steal, i let you wheel 

turned up, i ask what i can of you

if i show you this childhood, what does it seem 

neighborhood drowned but my memory sharps against 

i was hungry so long in this life 

held inside, does love become a burden 

blunt mouthed to stop speech, the corners of this living

fold down, i do and do not see you clearly 

when you say i know more people who’ve died 

who wins that standing, there were more photographs 

than hours and more ways to never say what we mean 

if we could just stay driving and never arrive, if we could 

umbrella softest bits, struck match tip, it was this need inside 

me to choose burning over ever just making it home 

Serpah less Listen

"I am your loved one, lost from eternity" 

-D. di Prima

 

ever aloud saying imagine would you

opening wider hearing it they

city they lived tried so i 

sings she ride will you

ever answer, cannot type that love

abandon share will you sorrow 

algae the surface settle we need

little very beauty rely very here 

know it, do of we course breaking 

directly look won't & need

control blows chain of is it

miracles am i talk 

wanting of long it comes birthing 

hard worth desire story 

ripped & not it continue to life

longing another us unfurled

make stuns emerge 

one who thing i so 

a that into us 

girl, recall i was

a woman you make 

 

Severed of Timing

 

severed of hope is there's more of you

severed of delusion, & i am [un]-ground-

i'd rather make art between us than other shapes of control

madness called down so fine, the line trembles

to be quantum fixt is a code of reunions, i architect

into the code with a precision of science to sound

and what you hashtag makes it real, for here we live 

inside a doming, a light broken as horizons

broken of bird song

god is a woman asleep in the bathtub, dreaming 

do we have to know what we are creating

what's the poem about. there's no

poem here. look at the outline 

of make and tell me, you can't hear 

how reality is snapping 

we became beasted, two sets of eyes 

for every seeing, two sets of mind

so one stays afloat

one of us shores

equipped of light and browsing 

pages of directions

what's an echo in an isolated chamber

but retreaded as indentations 

deep enough to hold memory 

if all love is the same 

than all death must be the same

could you be simply here

you can become so untethere

we chimed in, a charm of not 

as if not loving me could ever be 

as dangerous as if you did

and then what we don't know we don't know yet

half as deadly as what we think we know 

that is actually unknowable

i am certainly dead & what shall be
made of it, if we no longer fear time 

what makes it matter

Dropped of Desire

i'm going to take notes as we go under
as it capsizes
i'm going to small
in the terrible light of design
i'm centered on amaze
central to backing

there is a body in the building
is it recoverable
can you identify the design
of contamination, do you know how many
bodies were in the room prior to the diagnosis
of death: i am as statue. i am as prisoner.

i am attempt of constructed misjudgments
this song abrasive, undone of timing
i would sing for those forgotten

i was never going to be what you wanted
and that was hard for me to hold
i wanted to make it to the other shore
blessed of survive in how we held each otherdown

but here we are: adrift
i have to let you go 

i have to watch everything
i love
be taken by time

 

Seen through Darkly

 i would eviscerate any knowing of what i am 

shall we archive the way we failed at being human 

i tired. 

to keep pieces.

cohere. 

to make a thing.

what is a mind. 

crumbling. 

fail as a photograph. 

to capture.

what is seen. 

i watch the walls. 

splatter.

if i could out this loop. 

i would. 

you can't hold me.

to sane. 

i will erase. 

memory. 

abandon. 

is the only word i know. 

for love.

Return to Begin

i had to bring you back. 

to the first photograph, 

so you can see. as i see. 

the world dusty

stained with fingerprints 

the way everything human 

to me is trespass

collections of sound, the detritus of energy

all of which is to say: i cannot clear it away 

enough. this coupling, this charged center

the heart's core of incomplete

i would carry this wound in each iris

i would lens light to a trapping

tell me what i can't do is keep trying

like i will not surrender 

us

i will not be made to give over

in some easy gestures, told that miracles

are minor accidents, or try to swallow some 

time spent in between make and imagine

when we held the keys to every crystal chamber

the mind colluded to create in us

i would you whisper to me before we leave 

this place. at least once to delight me. 

use the words we chose in silence, tell me 

we did find something together here. 

 

Net the Imagined

absent photograph of your mouth

a poem written to myself

not giving up now

takes radical imagination

none of us can bear it

we keep moving, lost stars

what if what i always wanted to be

was a dead woman singing dead woman

songs sweetly into your dead mouth

till echo us all

 

 

Energy is eternal delight.

-Blake


this is a photograph of the threading of dimensions, the way one portal spindles into a next, the stories tell us all beauty is asleep and when we kiss we never kill one another as we do now in the new world order called paradise, called land of the freely lit up caged devices & underwater spamming that knows all your secret names.  you will get a great body of work, they will tell you, by excavating your traumas but what if i’m no longer interested in personal ads or buying more nightmares to store for nuclear winters.

 

in the 90s they assured us we would never recover, never get this far, trained to ghost hope & not fathom dense images we couldn’t slick trade on tomorrows. the fantasy of science was untethered and now every religion has a walking dead arc –you have to pick a team for survival but there’s nothing to survive, we’re so many dreams deep, there no longer exists a kick hard enough to reach—better yet, let’s invent new inventories made of lyrics forgotten. let’s line them up next to pictures taken on our phones & call it life.

Love Letters Ruin

 

idea(d) i dead or ideation, dis- of the time or –dis of the constructed versions, yes, i let so many hands run over me because the sound they fed me was for a moment i’ll take your breath away. but don’t let wander confuse. this is a picture of the night i loved you unconditionally, the way planet means wanderer, the way we orbit the body, all of this time we were near one another but it took decades of mistakes to make us fit together now, this is a photograph of how time takes everything away

 

 

 

i imagine i wish them well, all the megans who are living and whose lives are scooped from mine, the universe bubbles in dimensions and if you call upon all of your selves do you wonder if there is a version close enough to perfect to make me feel happy.

 

who dares to wonder if it is the living itself that is the sickness.

 

addiction is such a special way of loving back. that disappoint that you all go on without me. is it that the heart wants what it wants or do we just like placing blame.

 

shouldering shadows.

 

a plunking down. eviscerated noise.

 

i was in a panic that we were owed the spaces to make art or love. not sure what mattered more or if there was a separation.

 

i once had a fondness for thinking.

 

the ways of the world now are a slow drift.

 

[sacred pause]

 

the things that happen in our heads are the only things we know with any precision

Observation determines reality

 

Information received by the optic nerve is always interpreted as light. The trifecta of seeing involves the external reality, which is a series of waves and particles, the retina’s absorption of said material and the mind’s interpretation, which is what we call “the world.” The world secretly thought by a woman dreaming and dead. The fact that we are able to coexist in an interpreted reality that each of us perceives as completely unique means at some fundamental level, consciousness must not be subject to any separation. My dreaming is your dreaming as the truth of reality is no more than vibration and light. 

 

 

And when was the last time you felt a particular aversion or attachment to light waves or photon particles or neutrinos? How else to make the narrative of the felt world go than to create a mind that could take all of that input and create a new program full of graphics so complex, we might actually forget it is all manufactured. 

 

The actual statistical chances of meeting the people you need to meet in this world to grow and learn on your path is astronomical because of the number of beings on this planet, so it is either true that every one you meet is meant to change you exactly as they do in their entanglement or that the universe is exact and you only meet exactly who you need to entangle with or as Schrödinger, tells: reality is a dead and a live cat at all possible moments. 

 

I’m not advocating for specialized love here, as much as I am saying one can recognize the intricacy of the maze they are within without becoming enamored of the walls. I would rather love be continually warehoused in the body of the poem, in the makeshift of art where upon the cave walls we have thrown our shadows and believed in our dancing selves. The play of life should remain as such and can you see it around you always, so tell me too, how did we transform these naughty angels and better yet, tell me how we want to transform again into natures of light….

What is a mistake of light?

Day 19:

[pour out of me]  whisper into night/ pour all of this [out] of me/ this gesture is called: Begging

*Please use the guide for exact measurements.

********************************************

Process Notes: 

"Because dissociation is a breakdown in the continuity of a person's felt sense, it almost always includes distortions of time and perception."

-Waking the Tiger

Lens Flare:

"When light rays coming from a bright source(s) of light (such as the sun or artificial light) directly reach the front element of a camera lens, they can reflect and bounce off different lens elements, diaphragm and even off the sensor, potentially degrading image quality and creating unwanted objects in images."

What is an unwanted object in regards to light? 

Do you look for safety and security but in your heart, you pray for danger to be saved from the little dream we made here. 

Is this time worse than Katrina. I don't know how you would measure a disaster against a disaster. Each is as unique as a fingerprint, a snowflake, a stain, the way we love...

I am learning now there are so many layers to love. 

Have you seen this too. (in the still silence of these days when you can hold your breath against your beating heart, if you can hold it. can you hold it. can you let it go. i slipped inside each moment, stealth. we rotate. i leaned into not clinging, not grasping, and let it wash. let it wash me away, if that's what you want, new orleans. i could never resist you.) 

[and love, love was so slippery. like happiness. love was so abundant. we warred here and it was unnecessary.]

I don't know that light ever makes a mistake. I think we just have to adjust our expectation of seeing. 

Photograph: 

Clouds over the Lakefront 

Time changed during the pandemic, everyone noted. We steep in the familiar, the dissociative experience. 

The night we roller skated by the tracks in the warehouse while the trains rolled by... 

I want you to know at the end of the night, I rolled the whole perimeter of the space and swept it clear of all the energy we left there. All of my life has been a sweeping of sorrows, a gathering of grief, the felt sense of how energy shifts from the body into open space, and we move it. We transform it out into the replicating space of all of this. I wouldn't change a thing. 

I want you to know in all of my life: I have had friends who handed me ways to survive all of this. In the end, there was more love than I could have ever reciprocated. 

And you too, even as the world broke around us, even as you struggled and fought to stay afloat, you gave me the dream I held inside me. I wanted to fly and you said, here: I made this safe for you. 

And it made all of the difference. 

Love doesn't always shape by carving, I discovered in this life. 

Love shapes too by the softest of whispers over time; we pull so close, we forget to listen. 

Plague Journal:

6.7.20

Sometimes love pierces us so deep we want to flee it. Run from swift moving waters before we are carried away. We want to be told, this won't be painful or scary, but life is a meeting of reality where reality lays. We never go back. We are never the same. What about the radical inclusion of I will care for you anyway. Beyond what you give me, how you benefit me, what you do for me. Beyond knowing or else we begin to accept there is no stranger in a species of one. We can define boundaries but keep love unbounded. How many words for it is not the problem. 

The problem is everything you hold as a condition and call love is not love. 

The problem is what you are reaching for is not love at all. 

They say in a dream, everyone is you. I say, here it is exactly the same. 

We move through bardos and nothing changes about what we always are. 

We want so desperately for the little dreams of our lives to matter, but we are dust. And if we understood the way dust interacts with all dust over time. maybe we could put it away long enough to call up that incredible resilience of joy that harbors in each of us. 

Resource: 

Photographer Mario Tama arrived in New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005, after he was dispatched by the agency Getty Images to document what was shaping up to be one of the worst natural disasters in U.S. history.

http://content.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,2012341_2179993,00.html

Why didn't I do it for you?

Day 5:

A photograph is a lie. It takes the soul of what is sacred and lays it flat as if to say: Here is the shape of life, watered to disaster. Dis-aster: “bad star” or “ill-starred” like the shade of me disappears underground and between hooks and seeds, I can’t catalogue fast enough the labyrinth of plenty to undo deceit bloomed here. Everything I have learned about love, I have learned in this city: That is a truth I will die under. Ask me, and I’ll tell you, I had to hide it away to forget your name. That is how much you hurt me.


*************************************

Process Notes:


“Many therapists see CPTSD as an attachment disorder. CPTSD almost always has emotional neglect at its core… survivors typically struggle to find and maintain healthy supportive relationships in their adult lives.” –P. Walker


if you are quantum fixt to me
know we are going toward pure light

grief is like touching the surface
of water
you don’t become the water
and yet

“What is it that we as humans ultimately depend on? We depend on our words. We are suspended in language.”   -N. Bohr

Sound moves at 330 meters per second in air.


we do not survive our lives
so forgive, can you forgive
wave matter not duplicated but
the smeared out of my face
in the end, i will have the silence
i long for, i am untouchable
inside the box, i do not exist
i will extinct this song

In December of 2019, I went to a photography show with a friend who I grew up with in New Orleans east. Which photo is your favorite, I asked. And then we picked the same one: A picture of the lakefront. Nothing bad ever happened at the lakefront, I said. The photographer gave me the picture framed for my birthday, and I hung it across from my bed so every morning when I woke up, I would see it. When the pandemic hit, I would walk the lakefront for hours just like my mom and I would after my brother suicided. Nothing bad ever happens at the lakefront. We walk the paths of grief so often they familiar. I watch the photo on my wall, and the scene never moves. And we never move. We stay rooted to the places that have watched us suffer.

New Orleans Historic Collection, West End Amusement park 

Photograph:

New Orleans Lakefront with my shadow in it
30.0385° N, 90.0264° W

Hurricane Katrina hit southeast Louisiana on August 29, 2005. As the waters of Lake Pontchartrain rose with the storm, a section of levee floodwall along the 17th Street Canal near its mouth with the lake collapsed catastrophically. This was one of the most significant levee failures which occurred in the wake of Katrina's landfall and put the majority of the city underwater.
Floodwaters from the floodwall breach inundated large parts of the neighborhood in a matter of minutes. Near the breach itself, the force of the rushing water uprooted trees and even separated some houses from their foundations. Some areas received as much as fourteen feet of floodwater.
source: Wikipedia


In December of 20___, I went to a ______________ with a __________ who __ grew up with in New Orleans east. Which ________ is your favorite, __ asked. And then we picked the __________: A picture of the l_________. Nothing _______ ever happened at the lakefront, ____ said. The ________ gave me the picture framed for my ________and I hung it across from my _____so every _______when I woke up, I would see ___. When the XXXXXXXXX hit, I would walk the _______ for hours just like my ______ and I would after my XXXXXXXX suicided. Nothing ____ happens at the lakefront. We walk the paths of ______ so often they _________. I watch the _______ on my wall, and the scene there never ________. And we never ________. We stay _______ to the places that have watched us suffer.



Plague journal

5.23.20

giving up illusions. surrender to the way people are, surrender to the way people feel about you, surrender to accepting this is how it is & finding freedom and joy there. it’s just a choice. you have to meet reality at reality. not all of it will move in one lifetime. do you think we could be smart enough to weather our way out of here.  genius enough to solve the riddle in real time. to navigate the magic faster. we blow the dreams of this species across the water. i travel all sound. i would go there. accept there is no surviving this. death is the purest form of love here and no one is without it. dear love, is it abandon when you leave. when i leave. when we disappear from one another’s lives. what are we allowed to do with time.

i have never started or stopped loving anyone


Notes from the Channel:

Resource:

N.O. Artist Brandan 'BMike' Odums: 'We Make Beauty Out of Pain"
The prolific multi-medium artist and educator talks to us about the youth media initiative 2-Cent, his mural work in post-Katrina New Orleans and the double-edged sword of the city’s “recovery.”
https://www.colorlines.com/articles/no-artist-brandan-bmike-odums-we-make-beauty-out-pain

Will lack of touch induce a failure to thrive?

Day 4


committed/ i fold down my fiery wings & listen:
“Parts of the levee system were either topped or failed, leaving up to 80% of the city under water.” What do you do at 6:10 AM. Where were you when you heard the news. Where did you grow up. Where did you go to school. Do you think there will be a Mardi Gras. Can you locate New Orleans on a map a hundred years from now.  Once there was a city now underwater. We call it home.

*************************

Process Notes: 

“the habit of photographers seeing – of looking at the world as an array of potential photographs – creates estrangement from, rather than union with, nature”
-Susan Sontag

the devotional target goal is to post each piece by 6:10AM, then meditate for 30 minutes, then do a ritual energy clearing directed towards the GPS coordinates of the area of that day coalescing in a 31 day city wide healing reciprocity to the city from my body. if i imagine this makes any difference to the world, am i a form of crazy. is it hysterical in this world to only believe in love. or how have you ever known anyone has ever loved you. or how has no one ever loved me as much as i love this city. or has this city's love created within me a strange capacity to love all things broken and abandoned. and who among us is not.

Photograph:

Picture of New Orleans east sidewalk in the rear view mirror of my brother’s car


30° 1' 56.053" N     90° 1' 0.797" W


My brother was born in New Orleans east at the same hospital where my first daughter was born; it was destroyed by Katrina. After the storm, my brother and I went to the house where we grew up and walked through the abandoned decay. The tiles were visible through the mud, and I remembered them from childhood. Now the house is occupied, and the above ground pool is gone. The tree house my dad built in the oak, gone. The fence we put up for the dogs is still there and the shed where I used to climb on the roof. When I was 13 years old, I used to watch my brother while my mom worked after my dad moved out. After he would fall asleep, I would go in the backyard and smoke one cigarette behind the shed thinking, one day, I’m going to get out of this place. one day…

“Securely attached kids learn the difference between situations they can control and situations where they need help. They learn that they can play an active role when faced with difficult situations. In contrast, children with histories of abuse and neglect learn that their terror, pleading and crying do not register with their caregiver…they’re being conditioned to give up when they face challenges later in life”
-The Body Keeps the Score

“relationships extending curiously throughout space and time… spooky action at a distance”
– Einstein

“entanglement between particles exists everywhere, all the time…”
– Michael Brooks

“Even with high intelligence there is the always the risk of becoming overwhelmed by the persistent state of expanded perception. “
- Dean Radin

listening to the radio in the days following the levee breaks, i remember the story of a mother on a roof who waited for anyone to rescue them and during the night, the baby slipped from her arms into the muddy water that surrounded them. she couldn't swim. the child lost. an island of what takes us is this city. how do you not go into the water. how do you not go into the underworld looking for your dead. how long it has taken me to understand how thin these veils are that appear to separate us and how often we are crossing. and why is there afraid. we can never be lost to one another. there is nowhere to go. these are the ways we survive the nightmares we have constructed here, the types of suffering we dreamed up to make life "matter." we imagined all of this terror and inside of this terrific image, we forgot it was only us in the cave watching our own shadow dance on the wall.


can you hear me//who can hear me// can i hear what i am saying yet// [echo]


Plague Journal:

5.21.20

inside Notley’s poem Eurynome’s Sandals- it feels like she is inside my head, writing to me, inside my thoughts & then she writes about telepathy, being in another’s thoughts and can we get so crystal clear, can we tap into the vessel of language so clearly we share one poetry making mind, or sometimes how it feels when you are in love, and you feel like the other person can hear you, can know what you need, as if you are tethered, is that a type of being open to receive do we make the future with our mutual desire. can you be in a space with someone eclipsed of your need. if you drink poison by mistake, the “mistake” won’t save your life.

“When people begin to argue about doing things instead of doing them, they become absolutely impossible”
– A. Crowley

reality exists only in accordance with what you choose to observe

i have to get to the future to finish the poem that saves me from the past



Notes from the Channel: 





Resources: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-is-a-medical-and-financial-disaster-for-blacks-in-new-orleans-11590226200

LANGUAGE

when all this temporary undoes us

part of love is creating a new sound
thrust forward seemingly from nothing
now we part desire, a grasping that includes
holding loss, for every word is marked
its beginning and its ending particular in time

what is an echo of an echo, you can’t forever
shadow ban potential, and if i let go swiftly
will you know that is also love, if i let go
and never return, will you know it was always

whisper, aloof, whisper, fantasy, whisper en-
tanglement, pour illusion into chaos and what
different souping of design do you muster
not passion, but compassion was the breaking
i was most interested in, what’s the depth
we can hold. we consider the sand pouring through
our cupped palms far longer than we ponder that
what it pours through is not us at all

language betrays but look how we built
a small float of laughter and comfort
in an ocean of loss and disappointment
what of that, scream into the well: what
of these memories.

Cave of Hands

i am in love with things unbearable

press palms against the womb wall
as if to say i exist & can you handle me
to obliterate anonymous, before the word
before the outline of the body
to say: here inside i hold the sound of my naming

layered into patterns, the wheat threshed design
circles 8 fold geometry etched the fire of existence
open that portal to death before us

look at my hands, she says, removing all of her rings
beauty is not ours to decide, i say, how long will we
be able to hold on to this life

none of this life on earth is guaranteed

temporary imprint. each shadow. each bond
of love we wrap tightly around the heart

i pull it forward.

to poet is beyond a lifetime of survive for me.
my hands are on the wall. i have always been here.
i can smell the cave. i can hear the echo of our blood
rushing as the fire dances & we catch and name
the world itself a keen knife slicing

take this too inside your conscious hide
no one can stop the flow of love

your magic is an indivisible and unconditional
belief in life, in the self replicating beauty of the universe
in the patterns’ ability to self regulate and that we must
absolutely learn to let go.

let go and let sound loose from you into a cave
of hands held for eternity: what are we allowed
to do with time.

36 Chambers: Canto V

Canto V

that we be a descent, serpent from high

where our path winds to travel swift

one cycle to the next we six times level

through chambers guarded and don’t you know

blocked paths mark our particular tests

how far long will you stand to gain entry

so too this chamber is where we let go

too it would be weather fair and rainy

this cloudy version of design was desire

that held us down in lifetimes, it was desire

that shaped its jealous tongue into how we

would be clipped of wing, clipped of song

you will never wander farther past this door

if you don’t learn to surrender all that you

would grasp, love itself can be twisted

let not the width of how long we carry on

here confuse that it is not dangerous, let

not the width of that path make you believe

many can fit upon it: we push against

an always dream, and it’s no matter

what else you got left, he sings to the wind

whoever you are traveling with now is who

you are traveling with now: poet is prophet

come to any of this with small intentions

now i am the door of adoration

how devoted to this animation

can we beset as it were to a billion

where there is light there is reflection

of sound, where there is sound there

is an echo of what we hope to contain

a poem is imitation as sure as the line

of our own songs is a mirror of all

we choose to give attention, that not

one story be held over another, that not

one breath more precious in the evermore

we confuse here the terrible rending

of what is offered in a temporary held

for an eternity, here in the manifest

we dense matter into what can possibly

surface for sane. we held tears back

now we share newly minted tales of our

dear suffering & cry in the bliss

of devastation, this is how the stars

were seduced down, she hisses, we were

winded by how much it took to cross

the sweet twinning of self mirrored back

all the other could hold was our dreams

& how we were hungry, oh how desire rode

us as if we were winged starlings, a susurrus

branching into constellations dressed in faces

familiar: better remember her name was Eos

better watch them gather there on the levee

at dawn, will you with me, will you with me

I spent all my miracles for two gallons

of gasoline turned round just after the new

year, right below the rim of dawn, you’ll

catch the shades of us wandering always

at that end, river in doubt, river in trespass

be careful or you will erupt into the next

lost of your own grounding, lost of the name

secreted under your tongue, you can find

yourself spending a whole life chasing what

is just a glamour,  flash of I have summoned

you with love & to be nailed to the source

that each poem is a love poem, each song

our desire to be beyond the border of skin

  

here like everyone I love who I can still touch

and not, we think loss is what breaks us

in this silly temporary shadow swan song  

as if love so small between just two had any

reason to be named in the universes, walking

around dead and with your ghosted head

specialized love was a poison we poured

hand over hand and spoke so sweet,

feathers fold over your ears when I come

home, treat me as you would no other

arms once accustomed to the thrum

don’t give to deities what you would give

to any, surrender absolutes, the digging

to the core of conversations, a coupling

divides, invitation to betray, this lie

as if thrown from the garden made

some sense, a man & a woman forms

an incomplete gesture, some loving

but the mothering of all is a chaos

that would never tolerate such a miniscule

thorn in the bounty of these misgivings

to look to any other to fill us is a closing

our eyes to truth: there is no other

who can love you outside of you

any other feeling is the pretend we mask

in this place of plenty, watch it turn

to suffer: what they name love is a little

wind blown off course, not the storm

not the tempest of consume that served

our earliest poems, our songs of union

no simple cadavers bound to a touch

but of fire burnt so hot at the core

when a goddess calls, you answer

  

how to out that net of lust, for the body

is a war, for the body is template for taste

and touch and all that would fill, oh poet

willingly, we nestle in the womb and pull

sound from the heart’s beat so all of us meters

to a tune we watered on, shelled monsters

emerge to a coddle, seek all our hours

a way back: do we surrender to desire

or do we surrender our desires, are we

branches calling bird-song closer look

in the mornings i would weep under

the clouds and healthy the lungs gasping

healthy the heart beating and still i could

not hold it all, the unbearable being, names

listed of the dead unfurled and not like a poem

a poem is a song not a death note reminder

of how we failed one another always, We’ll

let them hurt us, even as we tore each

other apart or worse, how our greed

colored nature till we believed we needed

to suffer to even be alive, we needed to cling

in fear to the scarcity handed over and be

grateful they say as the cell doors lock

be grateful they’ll say as the noose tightens

sad eyed lady of the low lands hums air

cooled to the touch and my skin is barren

my heart is a sieve, nothing holds here

Monsters do travel outside. this chamber

is my whole life, don’t speak. i’ve

been in this wound so long i sift dust

In the end there was so much light

it stifled, from star we disaster, this

game is a matter-if-you-choose-it, stay

inside if you want to live, hide away

Everyone I think of is alive somewhere.

i forget how to be a belief, even here

I chase tail feathers instead of choices

no one has ever kissed me and meant

any thing more than damage, poetry

is an imaginary maze you can tread

here thinking there’s a solve in language

it’s a waiting, at the door to death, let

me in. i will knock here for all of time.

Notes:


Italics: 

Jerika Marchan, Swole

Jessica Smith, Trauma Mouth

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Vintage Sadness

Rebecca Wolff, Warden

Paige Taggart, Last Difficult Gardens

Travis & JenMarie Macdonald, Graceries

Megan Kaminski, This Place

Annah Browning, The Marriage

Sarah Mangold, The Goddess Can Be Recognized by Her Step

Kris Hall, Dillinger on the Beach

Jen Denrow, How We Know it is ThatJessica Fiorini, Take it Personal

You can't wipe your tears

CHANNEL : Why no one is coming

i'm not good. at loving. anyone. to love. in this. place. that word. means. a kind. of belong. a longing. a possession. a need. to permanent. i was temporary. i did not. want. to be. caught. stopped. in movement. i did. not belong. anywhere. and did. not want to. i didn't want. other people. to stay. i didn't. want. anything. but death. i thought. about it all ways. the empty. regret. of all of this living. wasted. time. all time a wasting. of energy. into patterns. meaning nothing. make things. that disappear. create. a facade. try to be something. when we are all. nothing. i wanted. to be with. truth. surrender. to the truth. of no one cares. about a thing. that doesn't want. to care. i tried. to forget my life. good and the bad. hand in hand. no difference. all memory. erasing. who needs to be a person. in this place. where being a person. means. i am cruel. i am indifferent. there is no way. to get it right. that would mean. with other people. and here. i never found. anyone. to trust. for long. all people. dangerous. all people. selfish. all people. only loving. what is easy to love. what loves. them. back. you. can try. to be perfect. but you won't. you can try to be. terrible. but you won't always. be that. either. and you will. watch others. be so loved. doing nothing. barely trying. people will stumble. over themselves. to reach. and others. come to love. lucky. it's sweet. it pulls. them. along. you see. between others. a depth. never offered to you. you see there is a veil. that separates. what can feel. and what cannot not. and poisoned. you stay. extricated. cut off root. a known variety of rot. you can't fool anyone. you can. try. but you will. always. have to admit. the game. at some point. no one is going. to want. a broken road. a gap in the hearted space. you. can't pretend at life. and then want life. to take you. it just. takes. it never gives. there is a hole. you can. crawl out from. you never see the light. you see a dim shadow on the wall. and think. it must be. everything. you think the flickering. is what someone means. when they say. you just feel. at home. near. another. person. you want it so badly. you would reach into darkness. and pretend you feel something. knowing you don't. death is the only promise. that was always held out to me. its hand. steady. with love. to take. if that's the only thing. that wants. you. why would. you say no. if you want to be wanted. and the only thing. that has ever said. it wants you. your mind saying. let go. stop trying. so hard. to live in pain. that must. be what love is. the quiet. the peace. the feeling. like finally. someone. sees me. and wants to take. me with them.