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 

        

 

Carnal Evaluation

 Carnal/Eval/Uation 

I am about to make the other speak.

-Barthes

Nor did the war ever end, i could not stop the flow 

Bled out, i colored the right bright love of the red winged blackbird 

Best believe in the magic of— pier roped our separate water crafts

In calm waters and spent, smeared lipstick stains cloud shape 

On the interior of the mouth coverings, falling in space

Like love, garners a series of questions 

Participation in the others’ hallucination of you 

Line the poem with broken facts

Each heart a haunted place, be not what leaps if leaps 

Confused, fashioned as monsters of old 

Every tree trimmed with faces, a sadness 

Always remember the brokenness i tucked under 

This necessary keep: What is your allegiance to

To be an American poet, the response of the nation 

If you know what you are is better than what you want 

Space is negotiated by resources, the way the lines of the poem 

Take the place of where we would have been real to one another 

I think sometimes if you would just call my name out loud 

Like that story, the whole world could begin again 

Raw Towns

 

For Bill Lavender

In the heart of deep hearts, no voodoo dolls

The shape of days, the hours we met and disappear, time

So fast it takes your breath away, how you can build a city 

But still be a stranger in it, the way a story of a man floating in flood

Waters in a plastic pool will image carve into the crenellations 

We call recollected history, in one lifetime you will have conversations

Barely recalled and words that turn swiftly the whole course & we 

Gather here, patchwork defense mirroring, look i have unthreaded 

The straight and narrow paths of arrival and departure: I would bet

Infinity in symbolic play, the truth of how any art meets and stabilizes 

The future namings, you were the only person who dared say it

That maybe it was worth it to abandon the safe measures of prescriptions 

That kept me numbed to wanting to die, imagined the length of travel 

Insanity must venture & if love is not our place than why do we come here

If love is not how we see one another, why are we paying attention 

I shed every safety net designed to cage in a whisper of what 

Could your mind be missing, to be set apart from self possession 

Campbell says, is the point of participation in a festival, the ritual 

Of disassociation masks so fine, and even in the knowing that 

We wear it, we revel in the apparition of this mythic state 

This state of how we crumble from fearsome field to invulnerable 

Abandoned structures, the shape of belief trembled along the loose 

Sounds unspoken for in any quantum reality, once there is

there is no undoing, the error of our lives was never 

Sleep’s frail hold or survival in the margins, it was 

Never seeing clearly how deeply the coding we designed seeped

The barycenter pulls the eye to a centered light but the burning 

Of that bright, unequivocal eye is as gentle as the sound of breathing 

Not to go gently, but that we do not go is the line’s off course entry 

Thresh: Hole

 Thresh: Hole

stand in the sound of angels

threshing like the palm fronds we painted

& held over our dead poured into the river

wherever grief channels its narrow

coursing, there we go & are, always

at the crossroads aware

 

come to me, find me untroubled

necklaces of skulls, i call each by name

must we always want to see more stars

in a doorway once, we stopped

& i took a picture of the wooden seraph guarding

i thought anything was possible between us then

we swim in never imagined nows, the landscape

of survive is can you breathe, can you breathe, can

you

we are dangerous in a way we rarely dreamed

now to one another, like i would sit far enough

away to feel you near me is a type of affection

to kiss is a poison, touching derangement

disordered of melody, the sound of us in the past

echoes so loud i lose sight of where we’re going

12.16.2020

Echo of Lost

 time is a feature of our minds

at each moment, we are at the edge of a paradise

called now, nothing can be in two places

the mind projects motion in what is a series of still caughts

what we think of as love, continuous

is error in observation: given enough time

maximum entropy will occur 

it was no matter that you could never be straight

with me, could never tell me the truth of what you felt

could never say to me any sweetness in this hard, hard life

for what i imagine is everything, is more that what you could

offer, is more than what could ever exist

and inside the dreaming of the dream, it falters

to eclipse us, order is a rare phenomena falling around us

there was no before or after in this scene

it is ever lasting, i was closed my eyes against loss

i was shut down to when you left me standing 

here alone 

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 

 

Fire the Poem

who can fire the poet, she says

but i'm quitting all the time

i wanted to retrace a cause, spool into time

this measure of what i determined a quantum fixt sound

to be soul to soul bound of karmic disasters or what 

is measured as in relation, i found myself wrong

about more than i was ever right

i'm exhausted by left hand margins 

& a departure from

how cute the use of line breaks

while people die of easily preventable 

things like hunger and poverty

how much longer in the charade of scarcity 

of resources and wealth is our requited participation 

 

we aren't taking care of one another, she said

the day we took MDMA and voted

i have a right to be a happy citizen 

given that our time here is infinite

why all the anxiety about right & wrong moves

we misremembered parting and departing 

a different set of codes

 

the night sky partially a drowning of dead light

but drawn as we are to a shining, we pretend

how many ghosts are inside us now

i mean inside this universe and well, of course

this climate of mean observations

 

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

Finger to Tongue

it sounds ridiculous to be afraid to love someone
but that's where childhood gets us
we learn the knots of trespass so well
i could tie them in my sleep
eyes closed. i haven't remembered 

my dreams in months. mouth of devastation 

it was death that saved us. not war or money.
we tried to run from that fact. every person
in a photograph looks like a corpse to me.

time stopped. & we are the dead trying
to convince me we exist. i abhor the taste
of when the world ends. will you climb
with me into the bathtub, cover me in rose
petals and film it for eternity.

in the sound reality

i must ask you to relinquish expectation
there is only this: eternal wiring 

of souls scraped in the licked grin

i see history as a dream barely escaped
history as envelopes discarded
history as the corner now absent of us
lingering, history as deluded stories, so numerous

who is not a haunted body in history's dream

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.

Passive in Revolution

grief sharpens us

turns us into the ghosts we are

slap happy in the world 

you can't survive living

i have adjusted my expectations around you

i have retrieved the significant bytes from previous dialogues

i have attributed values to the 1s and 0s used in each string

i have typed these symbols in the text box [$#!?]

i have anonymously answered three questions about myself 

that only eternity can hold 

i have become incoherent passive in the revolution 

as predicted by television 

i have telescoped my thoughts to the smallest diameter

i am winking at you across the borders of declension 

have you had enough water today 

right shift + control: delete your notions of absurd

it's taxing to be a poet

in baseball season. and without. 

amidst a pandemic. or without. 

we write about the moon. 

but it's not like i really want 

to end up alone there.

Bite Down Hard

i imagine we ship off

imagine we stow away 

i imagine the barges come and go on the river

we stalk around undetected

we slippery rats among the rocks

our tails a dead giveaway 

that we are alive still

searching borders broken 

i imagine i held my finger 

 

to your mouth 

& you bite down hard enough

to draw blood

i am a feeding to you 

 

i never wanted to be rescued

but devoured. like any proper

woman i would you let me know

you love me 

by removing my eyes, my tongue, ears

cut off my hands and leave me

senseless

i will know then i am one

of the adored

one of the precious

one of the salivated for by the masses

put one part of me on social media and with 

enough likes, i become a real girl

a real girl, they said, oh yes

everyone knows if you want to be worth anything

you have to have followers and likes 

enough to fill your days

that's what life is really worth dying for 

 

what else could make us the inverse

of god 

Solid as Wave

you've been nothing but bounded your whole lie, i mean life

to speak of it

i have fully embraced giving up 

boundaries risk nothing and are inevitable

everyone will bet on them

high praise slap on the back 

for wielding yours. but what an imaginary

what a way of concealing 

to think being human makes you 

so spectacular and not just spectacle

i'm not trying to craft poems here

i want a record of break, of fail, i want to insert 

into time the memory of how when you try 

to repeat, you are making a bargain with less

you can't go home again

but you also can't do any of this twice

do you understand what i am coding
you can't see clearly 

because our way of perceiving is being 

co-opted by what we consider acceptable 

ways to be in this level of program

and what we have allowed allows for no clear

management of the dream's taking 

so we barter and trespass and i want you 

to recall love is not a thing you can give 

or take, you have nothing and you get nothing 

dead or alive, we top the cascades of erase

you've been nothing but bounded your whole life.

the way we love one another is so particular

no word yet exists

what we call failure in this life is a lie, what we 

call success is a lie, what we call progress is a lie, what

we call history is a lie, what we are doing is actually 

nothing

Don't Be Afraid

this is the us of our country. the us of our diligent courses. the us of financial disparity. the us of consuming resources. the us of hoarding. the us of instant gratification. the us of short attention spans. the us of enslavement under different names. the us of concentration camps, of prisons, of anything but freedom, home of the brave.

please be brave.

capture as blocks of time. i was in the moment listening. i was in the net, internetted to notions of lovely, shaped by direct messages & alerts and not by touch, the sound of your voice is a memory but i have scrolls of words that will nail you into place. 

 

this is a story of failure, the ways we collapse collectively. 

found our discomfort is what we call every day. 

 do you feel historical today, i mean, hysterical. i mean no one can work. no one 

can function. i mean how do you not marvel every day at the psychological 

warfare we're being asked to exist under

 emotions are the entertainment of distraction

it's when you feel nothing anymore that we can begin 

to deprogram you 

how long is this internment? 

 or what is the length of your belief in time. 

 

 

 

No Surface Shatters

 

no. i'm not ok. you can't get this far

and be ok. they won't tell you that.

i can't figure this part out, i told him. 

you can swerve so far off course, he said

than you can still come back.

i'm stuck in a loop, i confessed. i keep trying.

he can't hear me because we are on separate time 

lines now, once we traveled together. 

 

that's all you get in this life

if you are a traveler. 

 

if you are lucky, for some short trips

you won't have to travel alone

 

but now it has been many long nights

and days and nights and days and life times

 

here in this location. 

 

i don't think we could have known. i don't think 

there's any way we could have known. 

 

but i've been wrong about so much.

 

we are ever at war. of course, we say

that is why we are here. that is why we came

we are ever at war

 

we are ever traveling here. 

 

 

look, i will one of these days

feel as though i'm getting it right

write exact

 

that blue. that sky. that sound of the river.

layers of concrete. holding us like magic.

 

all of it magic. holding us up. 

 

 

 

Center the Monstrous

 

What gets raped out of the body? What does the body forget in neglect? What is disappeared under the weight of every day annihilation?  What is lost in translation when we are never told the truth. Can beauty ever be enough. Can the belief in love ever be enough. What fills up the smallest cup we call our heart space. This is a photograph of a drowning, the space of this one drop can be filled with enough neutrinos to kill a person. It is in the smallest measures that we are risking every day. The algorithm of consuming to extinction is hard wired into you at birth. Is there a difference between touching your tongue to the burning flame and me telling you: The world is on fire. 

what we see is the poem orbiting/ the poet radiates/ a type of internal combustion/ seek it in a different 'light'/ infrared, global and music/ what is an invisible word/ between spectrum / if some of us had survived/ now all of this would be different/ like misplacing all of the umbrellas/ so you have to feel the weight/ of water on your skin/ the way you know you are alive/ or don't

the representation of a wish is the representation of its realization

 

what is spell bound in language

 

what an effigy for desire in the word. to say petal.to say bloom. to say flowered. we trade in the etymology of a softness and a vulnerable that hand to hand asks of us to fantasy how hard it is to exist here. magic was never about manifesting dreams as much as shaping the programs that hold you under this illusion that we could be handed the smallest pieces of the puzzle and still solve for whole.

 

 i have been warning anyone who will listen, to come upon collectively this never remembered space in the time line must surely believe we have never made it this far before.

 

but perhaps you recall the sound of my voice.

 

even now, you could sound out my name on your tongue and that might be the length of existence.

Extraction for Measures

 

these words arrive to you via reflected light. via the course from mind of design to mind of intention to the yellow brick mazing of never go home again. do you know what happens to a city that leaves the dead in a building for almost a year. now we do. now we know the answer to so many terrors. the way what we hold sacred can be stripped from us, the way we became history even as we sank beneath it. 

 

 

 

 

 

this photograph x-rays the photon’s expectation, it adheres along the edge. What is emitted from the core is a beyond the speed of light determination. Does the operating system of the universe run analog or digital we might ponder to pass the minutes. i can tell you that under survival such cushions are not needed to line the couch. you can turn the whole furniture over to float when the water comes. don’t ask me about fire. all i’ve know in this life is more and more intricate ways to drown.

 

Hard-wired to Birthing

 

 

lenses diameter light, cervix to the optimal opening of a let there be…. and what waters we trouble. shade or shadow, the haunting of areas long left of their one wild sorry. i was distressed by how unclear the damage was, kept asking you to help me see, but you put the console between us. you kept arm’s length and away, a shushing of my face in the wind. there’s no amount of fast between us that will ever scare me. it’s what you hide in plain sight that is a terror i would try to contain. like if you keep showing up, it means one day you won’t. it’s blurry what we are and what binds us. 

 

 

 

 

hydrogen and oxygen will bond to create water and what are we bonding to and to create what. we think it must be a maximum state of procreation, emotional intensity, sexual gratification or rage itself, but in practice, we are bonded to each person we meet along the way, to varying degrees we are bonded and forever entangled with each other.

 

i think if we could ride the timelines out long enough… we could see the whole diameter of how we circle round one another, how we influence and learn, temper and trap against. it can’t be accidental, the way time never took us very far from one another. and through watching this city drown and die in so many measures, some how we managed to make it far enough into the future to spend one last day wasting time.

Realization throws Bright

we are god and we don’t want to be. we want anyone else to have this task. it’s invulnerable. this always being a little light of mine to shine. this always being here but pretending like it’s anew. we want anyone else to take this steering. take the wheel. take the momentary lapse of judgment. take the last slice. take the initiative. take the risk and let failure lap you like a wave. take handfuls of similes and metaphors and drip them along the curves of me, licking it clean.

 

desire is what confuses us of free will. to know we have wants and the autonomy to access choice makes it seem as if we are moving through time with some awareness enough to shape reality. and not that reality is shaping us reciprocally, that there is no separation. it doesn’t matter what we want: half is molded by the attachment of what we long to have and the rest by aversion to what we wish to avoid; the maze from above is easier to solve. try to abandon resistance and see what floats.

 

belief is for living not dying. it can boat you shore to shore but once we exit this staging, whatever dreams we built here fade to dust. we are as moon beams, the hint of romance and then dissolution. everything we see is architected within the darkness of our skulls, caged in illusions, entire realities are constructed on this notion of collective dreaming. an eye is as adaptable as any other organ. it rests in the explosion of data enumerated to infinity. nonsense is the way we use language to make sense of minutes, hours and eternities.