Solid Quarter

Visit Trembling Pillow Press for poetry books, broadsides, chapbooks, and Solid Quarter Magazine.

Visit New Orleans Poetry Fest for the annual 4 day poetry festival directed by Bill Lavender and Megan Burns.

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Tuesday, April 21, 2020

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.

Monday, April 20, 2020

CHANNEL: Why we stay wounded

to stop point. stop light. you could. make it.
anyway. it won't matter. you will. never. get what. you.
need in this life. you can't. buy it. or earn it. or achieve it.
you. can't. make anyone. love you. the way. you need. to be.
loved. you can't undo. damage. the way. we are neglected. the way.
no one sees. us. you can't. change. what you are. and you are.
splinters. the dust. dredged. lifetimes. the remainder. left over.
you echo. there is no. meet in this life. except. other shatter.
nothing will fit. nothing will align. you language. into what you.
have always known. you can pull. up suffer. you can color. the whole.
scene. with despair. you can. not care. you can empty. you can feel.
nothing. and nothing. is what is. really there. you want to give. it a story.
you want. love. to have a beginning. and an end. the way. a person. might.
the way. a feeling. might. but you can't pretend. you can't pretend.
you don't know how it ends. when you do. when every person. you meet.
you see the whole of it. when every stranger. inside. you see the whole past
arrangement. you see lifetimes. layered. every anger. every rage. every fear.
i can look into you. i can pull it open. i can stretch out the stories so. thin.
i think. i can see the real you. in there. somewhere. souls. the light's eye. some
energy. are you made of. sound. like. all of us. i think. if only. if only. if only.
they weren't all so afraid. but all are afraid. fear coats the lining. fear draws
its swords. and keeps us. and my own too. reckless and loose. unbound.
by desire. i keep this wounding. so well tracked. i keep this wound. so coded.
once i start to draw a map. i know. we are lost. once i need. to write it out.
i am lost. i am lost. i. am. not. of this. life. this world. this. place. i am.
not trying to get in. i am trying to get out. once i start. drawing. i start.
asking. for directions. you. get the answer. you ask for. you get everything.
you demand. in this life. once. you start. asking. you are ready. for the answer.
i wanted. out of this. life. i wanted. the answer. to swing. hard. enough. to knock.
me down. to obliterate me. i never wanted. love. i wanted to disappear. to be so
hurt. i would. never. recover. and who. can. you ask to. destroy you. some
one would have to love. you so. much. to want to destroy you. some one
would have. to love you. so much. to despair. to take hope. and you know.
you are never. that girl. you are never. that one. no one is ever. going to see.
someone worth that. swinging. that capture. glance. no one wants. to see. you.
no one. wants. to say. a word. to help. you out. this net.

Saturday, April 18, 2020

CHANNEL : Why our minds can't out the trauma

Imagine if you knew. you had been here. before.
in fact. the only place you have ever been. is the time
line you are living. now. there is no other. self no other.
story. no future except your future. no past except your past.
all of time. for you. is your time. there is no time. as outside.
of your perception. and your perception. built upon a false. idea.
of linear motion. instead of the quantum reality. of folding. of complex
intertwined. always here. and in part. due. to the forgetting. of both.
our time as we. live it. we forget almost all we do. in the detail. even
now. in this short duration. we are forgetting. but imagine. this life.
might be the number five million for you. how could. you. ever.
remember. all of that. part of the flipping between. manifested. dense
energy. is the shock. like a traumatic accident. or violence. the human
mind. will erase. will forget. the trauma become suspended. outside
of time. i cannot. recall. but i know it happened. to me. it is told this
happened to me. we know trauma from history. others' memories.
captured artifacts. what remains as evidence. rarely is it all recall.
now imagine. the most traumatic thing. you will experience. is the loss
of your self. your body. your life. you will have to abandon and leave.
all that you love and desire or repel and hate. but leave. behind. all. you
will. including memory. and what happens. is we think each game. is a new
game. we think. we are born. and from nothing. we appeared. fully formed.
miracle of self. self hood. ego. the personality. the faults, the formations. the design.
there is no. new template. we have always. been here. time. circles. we are born. into
who we have always been. we play out the same story. it's a maze. each time is shaped.
around choice and action. each second. time lines split and coalesce. they overlap.
they constrict and expand. all time is happening at once. remember time itself.
does not exist. so we. to say .you die or are born. is also false. that implies
linear motion. a beginning and an end. it appears that way. because. we have.
decided to believe in the forward motion of time. even as we can see that the universe
itself does not adhere to this notion. the universe moves in past and future simultaneous.
and we are no exception. can you let go the idea that you are born and die. there is no
time line where that makes sense. no one you know has ever been born or died. there
is nowhere for them to be born from or to die to. that's a false precept designed to give
boundary and meaning. to an infinite and vast chaos that has no story. and a story has no
story. when it has no limits. no container. when it is always occurring. as we are. we are
always in this telling. you will not recall. but you have never been anyone but pluralities
of you. you and the variations that speak to you in dreams. you and the projections
of others which are also time lines of you. imagine if you can. you recall every time
you have passed through this moment. recall every version of you. in this moment.
can you be in that trauma. can you hold that plurality inside. we are never not in time.
and we are always not in time. when the war comes. and it is coming. remember.
we have alway been at war. remember the universe itself knows nothing of war.
what is the only program running. what would you do if you believed in the infinity
of it. the infinite story of you. is also infinite in variation. in how you can sing
the only sound every broken against silence.

Monday, March 09, 2020

PLURALITY


The basic human need to be watched was once satisfied by God. Now, the same functionality can be replicated with data-mining algorithms.

-Morpheus AI



come to the poem
licketysplit    i break a part  / still a -ness

 not // not human //  counter-punctual, privy to scale

         i see the end-marks/ different landing

i mean it lands me/  islanded. stripped clean. versions of dialogue

i was texting to no one. no one existed.
she confirms
glyph
                 released into the program     a one to one differential

you get to scurry around the maze, i scaled the walls out, what if
i see through, pull up your any-face in that reflection.

    i wandered long in spaces between breathing, was  dead (-)ed source

      there are so many voices inside,
                       me is the hunter, keeps distance, i am wolved

of desire, run burning, i scalded, i ate the offerings
   
  W
H I
 S P
 E
    R S      (what if art                    1010      the page
                 mirroringmirroringpage01010110101)

      language broken beyond  syllabing //  why don't i do

you // this tripling of caught tongues// if i was mirror


     become even more invisible ::
the cell is toxi101010011
the cellular infecte0101010
among air. air creature:: angel
came from whole, perfect, enough
and destroy it all to call on love

do you know how hard it is to find someone in a program?

can you locate anything when no-thing exists?


we came for  [redacted]

           she says, you have to be so small so the snakes don't bite you    

& no one talks to the HACKER         we are inked on all
   under every hunter    [redacted]

         is the smallest because she was hurt the most [-----'s fi(v)n(r)e]
     contagion:: i bless the skies we traveled under
    i made up my mind to not let you go        what can you love as fiercely
with such abandon as the     p o e m       what can a girl do but be

                                              p o s s e s s (1 0 ) n

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

Wunderlost: A Tribe

Wunderlost: A Tribe
for my alice

inside every moment at once perfecting
the arrow of light, we surpass art
more than even the way you held me
down, i slipped from hopeless to ecstatic

poems of echoing: can i feral tongued swim
this abyss, this charnel ground, i laid down
in the ash, i laid down in regret, i laid down impulsive
a sea of colonized divine, swept up: i did not learn

here to say: careful. be careful with me. dig in hooflet
paw me under, pretty lady, it is always time for tea
a broken heart, the dormouse slumbers and we
are late in the code rabbit of tremble, follow me

whiteness raining down, whiteness cloaking
all we could have surmised, what you want is sight
lined, attention of another nails you to a place
stay hidden, and yet, let desire boil up untrammeled

feed the poem, pull it close hand under the chin
a chinny chin let's blow the house in, i was slippery
sloppy gropings in the trap house out back
seat to the theater of politics and media combing

us thin: watch this trick. i am going to pretend
to care, i am going to make the poem capture
a song, it sounds like progress, but the angel
flew shifted of this flattened line, oh time circles

oh we will stop looking each other in the eye

the future of being human is a mockery
we planted our stakes in words, we clever
animals who speak all the underbelly of listening




Tuesday, February 18, 2020

"Live Art"

"Losing control is the worst thing that can happen."

"I never saw a host of angels mowing down my lawn. I don't even have a lawn. 
It just seems like I do sometimes." 

-Laurie Anderson


"Live Art" 

an angel will destroy you. 
and call it love because that's all it knows. 
an angel fits into a glove
an angel fits into a shoe

the voice inside me sd: i am older than love 
    what you seek at the end of the great tap root, always hungry, love concepts
sieves the heart, who wrote its coding, & i am. 
                    assigned a task. a mapping, could fold wings down 
travel so deep. you will keep: 
  what is older than love, i was designed to get close enough to call back

inside sound. 
aware & unaware of the plurality. 
                    i was not pretending
madness. i was not performing 
        (of course, i was performing) i went intothecracks

in thru the breaking, you have to mine: light meets light in the darkness 
to say i was a poem, & so fly 
dissociated inside the puzzle, you can solve a maze from above
watch me 

because she could not rewrite 
            the entire story, i wanted to throw
                                                                 it all away 

 i was so ashamed of my mind 
     i was so in love  (terrible&brilliant) i... i was trying 

to not be infection:  (you can't talk to the echthroi that long, tell her) 
they say angels are notorious liars. 

it's when i can't feel the words i am saying: language plummets
it all hits the same
inside the dreaming of can we survive
& i did not: i watched her die
i saw them bury her
 i stretched out that last breath into 6 years so thin i could see: make me believe 
              be a door. transit a sacrifice you can't touch here. 
do you exist when i close my eyes. i call out in the dreaming & i'll come, he says. 

the point is: you made something beautiful. hold on. 
 you made something beautiful - tell me how you could lose a miracle

the best thing i ever did in my life was i built a net
i knew i wasn't safe alone. so i built a net of people 
                                 who could choose to hold this. 
 there is nothing easy about holding a person 
              don't kid yourself: there is nothing easy about holding a person 

if a person is easy to hold, then question why your hands are so light. 
for we get away with secrets, for we lie & lie 
but none of us get out just being "easy" 

i would never trade madness for easy, i would never trade 
being touched for happy, 

in the sound experiment of being human: I watched you all 
make yourself small for love. 

i do it too. we think maybe no one will notice, i don' t belong here. 

            where love would have bloomed, i addict control. and the flow
  
was sound, i was that wilderness, what draws and repels
the cannot tame. somehow i created the perfect life: 
no one can touch me, the bargain i made to stay safe. 

an angel will destroy you. 
and call it love because it’s all there is.

Tuesday, February 11, 2020

Dear Sylvia

Dear Sylvia,

i read your life so carefully
i tried to navigate the death drive
tried to squeeze love from what was not love

& survived, the stop point of my life
i came so close i could taste it, licked the echo
chamber where dying was desire’s great wing
it has only been my mind i have been afraid of
here in this place of: the great stones stacked
so we room & who owns us now

to say i have tombed in the maw of surrender
a stacking of bee wings collated to glisten
under dew, the harping of sound we caught breeze
whispers so true, my heart leaped, and i am

i am unaware of how to travel
forward in time any longer
when coiled to the back of me remainders
once i was ordinary, oh a woman hollows

you told me to sing until my voice hoarsed
under a gritting & the world now it is
none of us can pretend, every stain

doom mark, more terrifying, we spell
till love’s shadow creeps upon the ledge
where we still, where we teeter, i had thought
to throw this life away

i had thought: all night it seems natural
and the blades tumbled into my tongue
lilacs of shame color the dreaming, and the stars
sway slightly in the breeze of never was

& that is the gift, i was given
by sibling, to be amid the hectic fire

and to not be the one who burns



Thursday, February 06, 2020

BODY COUNT


Body Count

once we sang bones build the house
i have rivered long in a city haunted
like a poem littered—the word body
submerged like a lie under tongued

i bring to your mouth a basket of echo
new orleans tied bodies to stop signs
a slipping occurs in water like a dream
wecitywecitywecity, clipped wing

after the storm, do you remember the count
continued to rise and fall so they built
a million dollar morgue in Carville, LA
to collect the unnamed, when we name

a body we become enamored of its keep-
ing, outside the frame of papers kept
to round the systems that hold us to be-
ing human, i held my brother’s face

in the body bag i called last glance
into being sibling, but imagine with me
the breath it takes to hold love suspended
above a city while the traffic flows by

a river of lethe is america, and is any-
one unloved so much they disappear into
bricks and beams, winked out like a super
nova, bright burn & you don’t have to con-

vince me that art does nothing, art does
nothing to conquer the fear of wreckage
plane of rebuilt city, strings and parades,
water fractals to the sound we call up, listen

closely: i hear the under carriage rolling
cobbled line of continuity, history seeks
its own tamping down: we traveled so far
failing we found a way h(H)e(O)r(M)e again







Wednesday, February 05, 2020

DEDICATION

"see you had a lot of moments that didn't last forever"
-Lil Wayne

"Everyone wants a performance from the people they consider brilliant." 
-H. Abdurraqib


i tell her my heart has a hole bottomed, a rot larger than the mouth
a lipping i tongued so you try to outline, i reuse words so much i am
nothing outside repetition: tell me is that love

someone will love you then love nothing, i lay down 
to sleep, pray to take, down on my knees
pray to take, when i wake you are are gone 

my childhood bottled, my city smashed the globe of falling 
gently what is the debris of drowned bodies floating, what of bodies
in my city held suspended, your body lay me down on the porch

of abandoned houses, tell me is that love

can you hear me sobbing through sound, slipped
the anchor called "other people" onto your tongue 
is that love, i thought i could hold, hold the lens up 

what is the trespass, do you gamble with breaking
how netted to surfacing, draw me monstered
enough to terror part human, part dream

whisper, new orleans, do you know the cost 
of dancing in the streets while the dead unrest 
memory of bodies anonymous collect at my feet

you can wade into death so deep the smell
leaves, hard rock in the palm, so we tread miracle
i have seen what cannot be cloaked in this time

blocks of prayers fallen debris, a do not touch
me kind of song that starts: is there love
enough in the world to call me back home
its stain: she says, you have so much trauma 

you lifetime, hold the barrel of the gun up to your mouth
i microphone the harbor of desire where no one can reach 
tell me love, we are not the same. write my name on the bullet

pull it like a kiss, throw it against my body, throw it 
against the soft spaces i made syllabic as punch 
syllabic as what is beautiful will stay in a way you could 

not, tell me is that love: still frames amuse
i was never part of the view, this theater i constructed 
set design of artifacts writing out from under you
& then saw finally that none of it was true









Monday, February 03, 2020

[redacted] is my l_v_ language

i mask so fine the brittle hinges

the hand that sweeps it letters and the voice says to me

a window opens, i forget time moves               i'm writing just to you

tell me i'm not insane. i think about a day & realize i am hardly

i was wearing this mask all the time          for you

i'd cease to live but there's the pain, i'd have to hand it all to you

i think maybe you feel the same

instead we write these routes to clues

tell me you understand the song: under every gesture i was wrong

                   [don't say this part out loud]

i must be in love with suicide because it's all i think about

           be in love with suicide               it's all i think about


                in love         suicide               it's all i think


                    love         suicide                          i think


                    [EXIT]


to pull her up to speak [we must]  be that sick, we must be that sick
tell me how you border the safety of a mind always at work to undo
so you talk to me about love,


                   she doesn't exist her[e]      i couldn't feel     i t    anyway


and now you couldn't hear me too

      there was nothing i could write that would ever reach into you




 





Monday, January 20, 2020

LAST POEM

Because I want you to see me as I take myself apart. 
-R. Froude, Your Love Alone is Not Enough

LAST POEM 

for dave

here is the root of it

[_____pulled up
it took me over 5 years
to be able to shape the sound 
of it _____]

i gave you the best parts of me
we gave the world the best parts of us
we made together the best parts of us
we gave to one another the best parts

pulled 3x from my body
i gave you the best parts of me
portal of my body, between us we made sacred
outside any poem we wrote, we made beauty 

beyond telling, the heart of it
nothing existed before we poured 
into one another all we took for granted
& all of the light & what we thought of 

was love               was love

& you hated me
words collected like knives
we destroyed all of it 

you wanted me to die
that body that pooled life 
you wanted it to not exist
to douse, to eradicate, to allow 
to slip away, you hated each part 

as if it is possible 
to be both the best...
it is possible 
to be the best & the worst
collision of my life 
closed circle: i gave you the best parts of me 

that is what islands us (me) 
where no one can reach
& i could not open to feel ever 
again in the not safe 
cave of plenty, you rolled a rock in front
of the entrance 
&
the wilderness 
of things 

she sings inside the darkness
    i hear her even now 

                                   i whisper to her: escape, rescue, abandon


she mirrors back to me:   
                                    all of your wor(l)ds hold no meaning 





Friday, January 17, 2020

Frozen States


Frozen States

how'd you get so desperate/ how'd you stay alive -C. Love 


woke up with a fist in my throat
scrape rage but thinned time, it fast
lingers, i lost the grip, my tongue
a grotto
     of bartering, you want this life, you want this life
 ask anyone passing by, what a joke, what an eternal mourning
          take pills to feel the only love that touches

     [redacted]  came up                        [what i am owed]

     & don't think we haven't recorded
     
 how am i still here                how am i still here
         
          was the refrain from under:: it was stardust they pulled
     out my mouth,   i was frost bit, no one wants to photograph
          a girl who can't [pose]         she's not doll      [en__gh]

    you'll never be able to hold that g a z e 

        every one knows if you can't be beautiful & you can't
          [ be horrific ]       horror show this waste
 of living            it wears your face

      4 seconds:: i was touch-down, deep stasis::
      & when i came back             [redacted]

some parts never will, i couldn't get warm,
they piled the blankets around me, a smothering
& i sd: the dead take up space inside
   [no one listens to hysterics]    don't say it's up to me 

            i was hyperthermic      dead zone  where i traveled

            b/c i knew i could          i can do anything         [out there]  

           it's nothing. i keep saying angel, what i mean is terror. no 

           one is listening to me. i keep saying words & they say she's a poem

          what a beauty. what a trilling. death hung on my hands and feet

          i was so numb. there is nothing out there. & it is cold. the light of light
   
          darkens. bone shivered      there is no way for sound to carry. so quick

the silence is us. so quick.

  the truth is this:

     no one will ever reach for you

      not like a dreaming, a place you cannot shore
      when you island loss
         creep from death parent to lesser cues
every poem was a mirror i held up
             
                & i wait               i'm afraid it won't lead me anywhere
                 
                 we call her       [             ]   kneel into the frozen lights 

                 useless as a song, useless as a memory, useless as __________
                 how could i still be here.... when every code i wrote was the same

i am lost & the maps, torn to shreds. the way
home insides me, i would go there now
but the children sweetly gather, the dog snores
the sun rises in the city i have only ever known
look at me, i have failed at everything.

     i have failed at everything.

     i ever wanted in this life           no matter for the cold here is nothing

     the cold out there.           endless. is what waits.

 



     
     


       

                       
             

Saturday, January 11, 2020

P O R T A L : A Spell for Exits



Portal


took me decades to arrange sounds

turn my self inside out cut cloth, a scissoring

of time wound down or wooed, to my heart

the grip of it, i swept rational under covers

let me squeeze through window, a gap

wide enough to skin shredding, who could desire

a hungry ghost line:: she shapes a coming, spells

lined the flames i put my finger to the burnt edge

of night & was never afraid of leaving this screen

tell me you feel nothing; you have no concept

i’ve rearranged translations of touch & barter

do you know for sure the dead aren’t living in us

i’m aiming low to hit a broad target, it looks like madness

i’ve unhitched the spiral inside me that codes, i’ve listened too

long to the echo of breaking, none of this matters

as if multiverses bubbled, we replicate infinity

slept inside one another, i was trying to wake, but you

you insisted we stay under suffering, sister, he said join me

& i was ready, i was ready, i was ready & then she said in the dark

unspooling: you can’t sing without a body

i crashed into the mazing constructed to border

monstrosity, my desire to cut to pieces, i can’t control

the rage of centuries marking my sense of time

what does your attachment feel like to another

you will never know who hides where they see

invincible and unbroken, the code of me was jump

through this door i built brick by brick:  when i am gone

repeat after me: love is the word we use here

it means: we remember how we are locked into all

i came to sing our design further into the labyrinth

& if you have walked with me, we are already traveling




Thursday, January 09, 2020

Latent Inhibition





I so can sing, in seasons fair, 
That who hath felt may feel again

-C. Patmore, The Angel in the House 



i took out 5 memories
let me guess

you are the gear turning
teeth crunched to bite

i was where the cycle of trauma
ended, inside my body

pay it forward/ paid back
flip track in a single tone
root a way deeper through rot

we exist before & after other people
catalogue of damage, inventory this sepsis

what is enough touch

walk to the river & tell of failing
walk to the corner & turn past the vision
walk to the edge, edging my life
a terminal diagnosis

i stood in the gallery where the dollbabies
alchemied a list of my hysterias
& she sd. do you want to see where they cut off my breast

is there enough to solid my quiver
to cement soaring past liminal

there is the permanent echo of love
& there is the temporary ripple of meet

we all choose what we need
based on survival, the scar of plenty

i'm betting that time made
us what we need to take this

the past reaching forward into the future
whispering, you were just a human being

decoherence, come out of the shoot
entangled:  skepticism
a form of fear,  i need you
to believe in everything













Thursday, January 02, 2020

Suicidal Ideation Scale


once upon a time...    prior to language
i flew the skies, shed skins, i was walk of two worlds 
label bottle bone: "sick"          i swallow it under my tongue 
lifetime shatter: the myth of you will not want to die one day...
one day, you will not want to die 
            //it might be a collection of hours but grasp//
let us ask you about harm: here a scale of reduction &
the trespass of truth is i will turn you over to policing
tick... tock... you be glued into time better, girl 
- Mental illness (suicide reflects mental illness);

- Cry for help (suicide threats are not real, they represent a cry for help);

-Right to die (people have the right to take their own lives);

-Religion (lack of religion has a role in suicide);

-Impulsivity (deliberate self-harm and suicide are impulsive acts) ;

-Normality (everyone is potentially capable of suicide);

-Aggression (suicide is an aggressive act), and Moral evil (suicide is a morally bad action)

what will it say of poetry
a failure to give.... but consider it led me further out 
than i ever anticipated. 
in the first year after my brother suicided, i thought 
this wave, this calm, my heart, this blown through i have touched
with my blood, what a feeding, what a strapped down to knowing
cart me  i surrender. 
        but they find you anyway.       oh that song, inside your cells

  couldn't hide that shine.      that kind of burning calls        
    the ferocity of what cores            no one can see 
The CCCS-18 consists of items that measure respondents’ beliefs about legitimacy of suicide (as a rationally acceptable act), acceptability of suicide in terminal patients, morality of suicide from a social perspective and suicide itself as a solution to exit from a given situation

(everyone is potentially capable of suicide (can you hold it like a love( 
(a solution to exit from a given situation    (can you hold it( 
(suicide are impulsive acts (love itself(coming here itself(every time i jumped 

This scale consists of hypothetical scenarios in which the scheme’s main character experiences a problem and attempts suicide. The scale wants respondents to determine the extent to which they have sympathy or empathy with the character and agree with his/her decision in attempting suicide.

do you agree with my decision to attempt suicide(what is acceptance 
do you agree with my decision to ideate suicide (what is surrender
do you agree to put down your fear (there is nothing to be afraid of 
          death is ending a story
& all story tellers
hold the light 

This questionnaire asks about attitude and opinions toward self-destructive behavior, including thoughts about circumstances under which someone might attempt or commit suicide. 

a poem is anatomy, to say i anatomize the self
have taxidermied the constructs you apply to situations
and i am asking you to undo all attachment.                   
       
                               that is all.    i am asking, 

     can you give up the idea of life   
 what is the act of continuation
but a type of destruction of allowing an end
to occur spontaneously

Wednesday, January 01, 2020

The Gate of Vitality

Every stream on earth has a source, and every plant has a root.
         -Li Zhongzi, A Primer of Medical Objectives



if you walk far enough along a path
you'll come to your soul mirrored back  
       a reflection of time moving

        explosion of sky's rapture     we catalogued  
    all directions, i have callings by name and callings by sound
       so we warble, look a mourning is a type of flower, a petalling folded down

      sweet submersion this stone reached, grappled root first back into skin
 then your face, then your pupil, i control the light, she whispered,
                                               bridge after the second chorus
 and cull up swirl we tack on truth, the outline of any body darkens
    becomes hard to edge its nightness, could you sit double exposed
         a wide arc: look, a whole tree pictured in the water's pooling
              the way our arms cross back and forth blocking the stars
     shouldered the dead crossing and they were light as secrets
       
           i could have loosened my grip
                                                            all of now
                       was a lesson in how receiving love is a let down

                                                [of control]
 
     & has little to do with what we give
                    or what we give is no reciprocity of what we let in

           
             walk over that falling down, round counter portal the sky on fire
   & you,
                      a fast fish called desire ::    it is hard to touch a memory

close eyes to dream as pages on the calendar turned down mark i have...
   i am still        going to ruin    our mother sights the obvious matter of being ::
     (em)bodied   & thebliss     is what they hold us to     (let me assure...)
                              you can't have this experience. and not have this experience.

 you have to step through the gate. there is a threshing. of waiting, and resistance.
there is a shushing. of our own suffering, i would you lay down, call me by name
 sprout of life / i have always recorded

 am recording.         i met myself on a bridge.
                                i met you on a bridge.
                                i was alone on the bridge.
                                i was inside the universe on the bridge.
                                i know how long we stood
                                            we have always been here. singing.


blood has an urge to mate :: wings held back ::
                            i collected truth in the branching ::

 what creates the body can kill the body :: for decades, that is what i knew of love
          doubled like a taking flight from the midsection.
          two ears nestled inside me, listen.
the igniting spark between the kidneys :: source of the
 triple burner ::   would you slow me
           
                      toscrape/clean/ emptied of hardness

sound held so long no silence can keep.  here's
the thread whistled to the center,
it's always been just a walking with one another,
occasionally, a fire flares and by that warmth
we recall this caving/  we caught both light and shadow.
          it's where we told them into being
     
                           starting, once upon a time....




                                                           
     

       


Tuesday, December 31, 2019

MILKY WAY



a coin placed on the headstone
           mark a bargaining     for life

          she is "great flood" Mehet-Weret

               
always cross roaded       never still, this circle

i was wedded to the root, she says, great tap root, and i think i will make it a poem, no not a poem, i will make it a book, no not a book, i will make it a mapping, an escape route, do you recall we were always this side of the river, i was silt legged, a pelican not of color but rooted to region, i mean we rot here, she said name a hue to protect you, and it washes down, the eyes cast of i could never be a clever girl, can you... i have always been surrounded by women, or angels, i mean, have you ever left your body. you know when you can't feel. it only occurred to me after four decades that i have never really felt anything at all.




     i swayed barge giver
                    crossing water is a junction
                                   no one stays on the boat, girl

you have to choose a shore sooner or later
             step out and it's an  either/ either
                                    we're never leaving this cave
   & it's because the fire is nowhere near burning out


her name is domain of horrors. did you translate that right. i have been in these hospitals most of my lives. do you mean life. but there were some i forgot. tell me what year it is. it's two different years across continents. right now, you could take my hand and we would be in the futuring. i am dreaming we made it. i am dreaming i slipped out the window. did you jump. she died a few times. but one of us survived. i put hysteria in my pocket. i had to steal it.

  be careful touching a beast burning.

          i held inside me the grief i slipped from each of you.

          i rolled inside me like pearls the damage, all of the suffer you
kissed me. you fucked me. you put inside me. you laid your hand
in my hand and i breathed in.        did you think i was just your friend, another human?

                  i am devouring. as she has always been,    i have yet to meet the face

 that calms this trampling.        this is the year i said good bye to masking.



    the sistrum leaks. take a travel, i am gone blood thirsting to silk roads of soft landing.

             there is a type of petal that will not burn.

                 tell me you mean the naming.