tiny bubbles

i don't think i'm really committed to poetry. which is as much as to say, i just read a poem by someone named heather graham in pilot, and it was very very beautiful. what my poetry has going for it is diction, but it rarely goes anywhere.

that's the thing: i only have enough discipline to pursue one art form which requires the paring of everything down to a singularity--a beautiful and impenetrable thing, no matter how ugly or diffuse (i've been reading the new critics recently)--and it's singing. i might not be very good at singing, but...poetry's too strong for me to work on. if i have something in me, i'll write it down. or possibly take some ex-lax. it's a toss-up. singing i can work on, because no matter what else, it's worth it. poetry is some sort of sea in which i am rudderless--singing is a sea in which there's a half-naked wooden woman to follow, because she's on the front thingee and i'm in a ship. WHAT?

if the discipline of singing is transferrable, i can maybe write poems. at some point.

list of songs i would sing were i to have a recital which i probably won't ever: (in progress)
-"o my stars," michael hurley
-"mon coeur s'ouvre a ta voix," saint-saens
-"i've got it bad (and that ain't good)," webster/ellington (according to the internet)
-"st. christopher," "temptation," "blue valentine," waits
-"midnight sun," johnny mercer (?????)
-"wild is the wind," tiompkin/washington
-"goldeneye," bono
-"l'amour est un oiseau rebelle," bizet
-"nessun dorma," puccini
-"horses in my dreams," harvey
-"darlin' be home soon," lovin' spoonful
-"take me to the world," sondheim

...it would be kind of depressing. i'd need some suggestions from people who like happy music. it's not that i don't like happy music, it's just that i need to be pointed in the correct direction usually. but since this is a fantasy list, it doesn't really matter.

less creepy than usual love poem

i know you have a name but i'm not sure what it is

imagining your flesh:
local household to an ancient want:

creature-construct,
the nearest and dearest.

imagining you, a comma in a bed:
the sweetness of those half-furled limbs

concentrated, expressed in the eyes,
green, brown, or blue:

i think,
therefore i want.

gris gris

"...as the gods decompose into their elements (cultic, etiologic, theurgic, physiological, euhemeristic, iconographic, cosmic), they continue to give off from below, together with the smell of decay, an aroma od Olympian ozone that communicates danger..."
-gordon teskey, "irony, allegory, and metaphysical decay"

sound of six seeds
snapped by strong white teeth:
red dress girl,
sitting on a burial mound.

up from mould, mulch,
that stuff that releases
that rich smell
at a touch.

it was a cross-
roads
nearby atlan-
ta. red dress girl
six rubies ringed
her throat.

up from mold, mulch.
that stuff lets go rich smell
at a touch.

i would have been
nuts
to take that hand,
take that hand
and crawl
through the dusk--

up from mold, up from mulch,
the stuff with that smell,
that smell loosed at a touch.
___________

peel that thick mottled-gray bark
off the tree.

break it in half
for me.

sempre fidele 2

subjective taint

"not faithless":
low-whistling wind
within the words,
breath
hot
from the roof of your mouth:

the ivory teeth
the arced tongue.

the "t" like a knocked
door;
the "s" like snaketongue:

in and out,
in and out,
speaking what's required.

semi-memoriam

touch base

fingers
feel
skull.

smooth skin,
yellow fat beneath,
then red meat,
the white bone below.

irreducible
like all
hidden things:
the frailty of flesh,
the darkness called night.

sempre fidele

how you undo me

o cluster of stars
in an intimate sky.

i imagine falling:
the manner in which
i could have tripped--
splay of hands on the bright-lit
flooring.
cupped, the object
of that imagining.

that cluster of stars
with its dim cloud of meaning,

held. and holding.

mambo number 5

i'm arguing that it wasn't a choice for you. i'm contesting the notion that you had a choice.

but then again why you would have needed one is a little beyond me. so you didn't get one, and that's fair.

i'm contesting the memory of your eyes and how you made me feel.

set yourself against the memory of lips, c. set yourself against the memories of cats and lips and not knowing what it was you felt. 5 in a mirror. dry hump on a beach and writing someone's sonnets in the sand... love and geography.

is there a way to define a memory, especially ones as overplayed as these? some sort of teardrop crystallized into a diamond, mid-cheek, or something equally derivative? hard as the road in santa cruz, riding a bike and throwing roses at your house? judging? red fishnets?

i don't want to eradicate these traces; they are what make me me now. for now. sometimes.

donc je suis

love poem

and the wind
and the necessity for a jacket.

your waist in my hand
a cigarette.

your berry lips.
i walk past a field

studded with stargazers on blankets: casseopeia.
your hands by my sides

the wind. i wait
to see what i've breathed into:

your hair
the night sky.

woodcuttin'...we're woodcuttin'...oh isn't it wild

llama of the report:
a drama

(no it's not)

article 1:
there shall be no playthings,
no hinging anything on anything.

love will be achieved, if it is achieved,
by sense, touch sound and smell, and feeling,
sound and vision--

a knowledge in the anterior crock.

rulings and their aftershock.

in a time of cholera, love is
what we make it:

awaken.


article 2: winter shall be exiled.


article 3:
stars shooting in a sky like black hair:
your eyes against your face and those
sweet vermilion lips you painted on.

roses blooming on the left hand side of the fence.

soft sweet calumny: i did not exist,

until your visage
told me i did.




*notes to this poem: (to be read carefully)
"face" and "fence" rhyme about as much as "visage" and "i did." there is a connection to the parts: notice how in the first the author eschews the claims of "playthings," whereas in the third she relies only on vision to describe the object. the critical reader has to assume that the title, therefore, has something to do with this juxtaposition: does it constitute the "drama" referenced? in a post-9/11 context, the llama can be interpreted as representing the middle east, pretty obviously. and "winter" in the second part must reference the cyclical nature of seasons, ergo life, which is backed up by the star imagery in the third part.
-e.k.

in general

this never happened/bathroom things

making myself cum on your toilet seat.
outside a car blew by singing an eagles guitar solo.
wind into white curtains that had probably hanged there since the nineteen fifties.
a blue light; a little bit cold; an unsteady lock on the doorknob.
however i rarely get caught at such things.


using the soap in the library bathroom.
that foreign scent sticks to the hands,
sometimes for
hours.


washing my hair in my shower.
i had to stretch back to get my head under the nozzle.
if you do something every day, you can learn to

ignore the
way it makes you feel.


later i was

un-fancy

hyacinth

things that germinate and burst through rock,
growing, with red flowers. and how the rock
holds them down. and how they turn faces
to the stars. and how the wind tastes.
and how it is cold. and how the stars are nothing

but bright salts, chemistry in the sky.
and how the night is a sheath
and i walk through it a knife.

and how the knife is a heart.
and how the heart is a beat.

beat beat. how the heart is a beating.

--

gasping in the sun.
the rate at which the sore runs.

the rate at which the rain
tears the hair apart, strand from strand.

these things are sad, very
sad, and i don't know why:
a frame, pictureless. on a driveway.
in detroit. on sale for ten dollars.

stabbing at honesty, unskillfully, with some sort of dinner knife for children

one day he'll come along

the sun has gone down but not yet the light.

i think in why's and ex's--that epic night
we talked on the porch where the bugs threw themselves
at the light,

that madly uncomfortable breakfast,
slathered in sour cream, stiff and white, men i didn't know

everywhere. i wasn't drunk but i said i had to go.
what i had to do, though, was walk in dark along the path
i'd trod red-hooded with that other wolf,
gathering strange red flowers and watering them.

still seeing you. your hair down and lips lined. your eyes
and voice. the shirt you gave me. things i never had and
knew i'd never have, things i told myself i didn't want and didn't.
but wanted to want them. wanted you to want them.
williams' escaping rose: i twirled the stem.


memory, a leaf:
crush it and smell the deep scent
of autumnal nights.

little femocentric

proem

watching it spiral red down the toilet and im like, im all,
eew, but eews a blanket statement, a tarapulin for the soul
of the matter.

its a horror movie in the pants. death, rejected life, that is,
heimlichs essence--blood, blood--uprooted, exposed,
outfloooowing, outpoooouring.

its what makes women women. its what makes
lesbians so hard to date: show me a woman without mystery
and ill show you a blind idiot, and itll be you.

im thinking of ridiculous things: footee pajamas, shrimp,
and at the core of me still lingering a font
of mystery. how great we are.

freaking yeats

i'm sorry about the emo. i'm hoping to find a new point from which to depart, something in between concepts, utter nonsense, and stain'd lyrics. thus far i don't seem to have managed it...but, hey, not managing things is what i don't not do best!

i mean, i'm not a visionary. i do nothing if not ride the wave. and the wave currently seems to be telling me that emotion, and something representative, is more artistically valid than hiding from crap behind a mountain of words. but is this any valider than other such "artistic" "understandings" i've come to?

in some wierd way i feel like i'm becoming a machine--empathy churns out understanding, understanding churns out poorly chosen words, and the outside crust is made up of some unappetizing conglomerate of ego and fantasy. i mean, my mental lanscape will improve. but how? toward what? slouching, possibly, in the direction of some birthplace, and i don't even know it?

bizarre and emo.

symmetry.

like a woman
weaving her hair
into the water
of a stream--

it flows dark
over rocks.
the arc of
her neck, the

trajectory of
a thought.

break me, break me open,
split down the centerfold like
rock.
i'm still

so close to
what you
made me. break me,
break me.

encrustation: a song

i give out my joy, i give out my joy
i give out my joy to girl and boy.
i give out my joy to man and wife
i give out my joy to sheath and knife.

i give out my joy to north and south.
i give out my joy; it's given out.
i give out my joy like grapes off the vine
i give out my joy--it's not even mine.

i give out my joy like pen on ink
i give out my joy with the kitchen sink.
i give out my joy in the lengthy grass
i give out my joy somewhere up the ass.

i give out my joy somewhere black and red
i give out my joy in the wet wet bed.
i give out my joy on the corner street
i give out my joy in the sweet sweet meat.

giving out my joy so tell your friends
i give out my joy till the bitter end.

certainly very bad

a prayer

joy is not all that i have to give.
i have more than joy in me--more than happiness--
more than cloudless days, more than night
soft and liquid with moonlight.

fingers deep in earth. dirt to bear the dirt.
fire flickering on stone walls and a strange wide-berthed mouth
calling strange cries. small heavy eyes beteemed
with strange needs--i have more than life in me.


but i hope i gave you joy. even
a little: smiles like weak plum blossoms and a vapid laugh.
pieces, half-pieces of my parts--
embroidery, unmade easily, but yours...

my brain is hemmed with shadows. soul, heart,
all parts, hemmed in, woven in. sickness, wrong, shame,
fecund, sopped with overtones: a wail a dog would hear. but
this would have been a finer gift

than what i gave.
perhaps, though, less appropriate.

esmeralda

archduke 2

because i was good all day i took her out for a spin. revving for me, for me she took the pavements, because i'm good with her, good for her. before me who did she have? who did she have?

when i'm in her i know sometimes i take the curves too fast, i stop too fast, because i want to go. i want to feel her move. she's my secret, my witch.

sometimes when we turn my wrists cross above the wheel--sometimes, heh, i almost question who's driving.

one more color now

communicable

harbor, baby. it's in the details,
babe:

waving knotgrass.
early gray morning.

the shiny grass.

like a plough
against a stone,

like a stone split
against a plough.

endlessly furroughing.


with earnestness
trying to explain
what the fuck it's
talking about.