get happy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QawFBxJMr5E

in the throes of a tragic reversal (rev 1)

My bedroom is cluttered with film strips of our hearts sliding back and forth on parallel wires running from my sunken chest to yours. Two hearts move in a still frame. I have placed a cloth over my true love's face because desire has taught me my name is futility. I think it's only the truly hopeless that find something brand new in life to save, causing them to repeatedly dream of the counterfeits of heroism. I am looking for a logical idea of what love is all about so I lose my happiness. The last things you said to me are "a wind that bends you over the foundation stone of compulsion and disturbance means you know how to die continually" and "sometimes you must get your ass kicked into being receptive". Your refusal to open a door that you slammed shut turns the rupture into an interruption that gives me ellipses for fingerprints. Why does other always become the analog of love? I will re-plant the trees uprooted by the flood pouring out of the thicket of our bodies. The flood is milk mixed with whiskey. Muddy, with hands drenched in solitary residence, I burrow the quaking aspens deep into warm morning. Looking in your footstep, I saw ideas of consequences. We will talk of other things now. The orange early-morning sun coats the trees in brown sugar. Give me your hands so you can't wave goodbye.

snow

As she readies
for the meeting
her reverie playing
on the wall
atones
for perfection
unobtained

hold still the bottle

snow on the roads
makes night
more so
she talks rapidly
deconstructing
the collision
or was it just

a drink and a kiss

the king of A.A. part II *

This morning
when your half-full bottles of Jack Daniels forsake you
for a thirstier, more perfect drunk,
when the white-throated sparrow
sings profanely to you in your borrowed clothing,
when God hands you the Death Baby
instead of rocking you like a father would,
you should be happy with this.

This morning
when you see winter coming
carrying a cross and a star,
when your soul adheres to your bones
like a suicide hugs her gun,
when you tuck away so many lies
that your pockets bulge and rip,
you should be happy with this.

Be happy with this,
as Vermillion’s ten-thousandth
blizzard hides you from God.
Tilt your head back,
gather a mouthful of snow,
and pray, let me swallow magic.

And as your side is slit
by the tight smiles on the lips of poets
who have nailed you, silent, to a cross
that is meant for a thief who has stolen
more than words, be happy. No one else
has had her eyes pinched shut by a star.
----------------------------------------
* for alice, who asked for this back.

stockton gala days

everything is collapsing

my room is humming:
the stereo, the lights,
the guitar in its case, bronze strings
in dropped tuning
slightly vibrating
in a holding place.

poems described in paintings.

poems found yesterday in a tin box buried 1979
in the back yard under the hackberry tree.

“what has already been said is not enough”

I keep on calling.

I am a liar. I have been deeply corrupt.

rain falling, cycle turning --

I promise you.

the television era

1. SISTER
Do you remember when you were five, back in the television era, when you stood in front of the TV screen and switched the picture off and on and off again, watching the reflection of your face magically appear and vanish in the glass with each turn of the knob, while the real story collapsed into a small white dot that finally blinked out into blackness? Do you remember the curled brown backs of fallen leaves crumbling under tires as the hurry of passing cars whooshed them off dashboards and roofs? Do you remember things slowly getting worse, each season wiped blank, predicate and cause-and-effect rustling like birds’ nests untwining in the maple trees that canopied our street? Barely old enough to tie our shoes, we tried to grab hold of worry swirling in mid-air, the mitten-muffled clap-clap as we chased dying things in the wind, each fragile part of speech that I let go was a forgotten line from the best poem I will never write, and you laughed in spite of my grief, adorning my red stocking cap with a sheaf of leaves stripped, crackling, to their useless stems.

2. SEPARATION
Today, I look out the window of my basement apartment and see only the knots of bare branches like tangled hair and a flat block of sky. And today, everything that is not sky turns to sticks and is struck by a wind I can see but not feel. When you and I speak to each other from distant towns, our halting sentences trundle through the stubble of cornfields, amid the round stars of snow shimmering under our porch lights. Nothing is sweet between us. I open my door to you, but every day you pass by and never look in. The wind enters anyway.

3. CARTOONS
And no, I cannot fall too soon on these leaf-piles and hide myself. My lover has traced my lips with honey but she wants nothing from me now, and this is a poem described in a movie only by peeling the colors slowly from the film, those framed momentums, where at last the pencil animation of the real story is uncovered. I drag my fingertips along the graphite lines and swirled ovals that fill me in, and throw the ellipses of my fingerprints on your passing shadow. You might pause, look back, feel something. And then turn away.

life is sweet | maria mckee

Brightly ruled lines.

Ransom, remoteness, remorse, here on the curved world.

“I am defeated all the time; yet to victory I am born.” (Emerson)

Mimeographs of semaphores.

Now that you've got a part of me, will you keep me?

Astringent persimmons are shaped like your heart.

The rupture of hope in the autumn. A southeast wind blows your voice into mine.

The repeat of the letters in our names.

Rain, 1:28 AM. My steady breakdown, my everupturned face.

The phone rings, and I let it go. Or it doesn’t ring, no matter how much I want you to call me by my name and whisper to me, I am still here, I am still shy. Tell me by your breath that you miss me.

sometimes an anguished voice is enough

jeff buckley | hallelujah (live)

hi, kids

Thanks, to the five of you who read my blog, for checking in. I've not been writing much lately, so that's why there's a drought of new stuff. I'm working on a few pieces that will hopefully show up here soon.

As a friend of mine says, instead of saying goodbye: Peace and Love!

bound

I try not to question anything. That way if something goes wrong, I can’t be held responsible for knowing better. But electricity runs fastest the more miles it has to cross. You can follow the dip and glide of roadside power lines with your eyes as you drive east to Minneapolis and be certain, when night comes, that light will shout from poles into the shadowed yards of farm houses along Highway 13.

If the sky is there for us, why not look at it? Why not throw our heads back and laugh and suddenly notice that we are free?

I plan to discover God in the strangest places. My father’s heart, for example, is made of a million batteries powering an expanse of light over the Jim River valley, cutting the land into spindles that we gather into sheaves and scatter from planes. We are happy, we are busy making the world, you are never so beautiful as when you think no one is looking. Push me hard out of the cargo hold. I’m laughing, falling, and turning like a record on a spindle. I wake up before I hit the ground.

.

and every now and then a bird would not fly by
and someone would look up and say:
huh, what wasn't that?

http://www.sendspace.com/file/mzactd

click below

untitled

“The last leaf that is going to fall has fallen.” – Wallace Stevens

For ninety-nine days the fires burned. There is no
symmetry to anything now, but the reconstruction
has begun, one solitary steel beam raised upright
yesterday. See how rickety the blue sky is, our cold,
helium gusts of speech pushing up and up from the sidewalks,
the streets, the crowded corners, arching the wind over us,
the molten stories of six summers cooling finally into myth.
We have sewn shut the horizon line, built a network of nerves
threaded through with red, pulled so tight by planes bellowing
into buildings that even hanging out the windows for air,
one last phone call to those you love, could not save your life,
this thread of feathers torn from the skyline billowing hotly
from the 104th floor, into the consolation of space, saying
hold hands, jump into the sky, in ten seconds I will catch you there.

the king of A.A.

Anyone drowning wants to crawl inside a net, or simply float to the ice floes with thousands of empty bottles, their labels bleached white by the sun, voyagers into the synthetic wilderness of childhood. My father’s goal was to not get hit by a single snowflake, so in March he curled up in the garage and waited there for summer to come. She decided to banish all garments from her life, even if it meant she would feel winter’s frosty stiletto on her bare sternum. The backs of wind-blown leaves flash in a code I can’t break. An irregularly formed history is necessary if two lovers are destined to collide, and voyeurism dictates that it happen in slow motion. When I was five I was only as tall as my mother’s knee and paid for it by having to fix all the broken appliances at my eye level, such as the crispers in the refrigerator that slid off their tracks or the stove drawer that got stuck on a frying pan handle. The most you can hope for from this life is that the final scene will not take place on a dance floor. Songs may save you but only if you can tune them in on a thirty-year-old red plastic transistor radio, staticky under tented sheets, dark. Is it the curse or the cure that will kill you? In other words, what will be most helpful to Death, a rapidly spoken lie about how much you have to live for, or the slow drawl of the friendless truth? For once in my life I will think twice. The loneliest sound in the world is a traffic light clicking from red to green on an empty street. Oftentimes each one of us calls to God, and that slip binds us to one another. It's a Disney ending, Snow White kissing me awake deep in the forest, pressing love's first words against my lips, the Magic Kingdom only a limp and a sip away.

falling down again, ask me if I care

http://www.sendspace.com/file/3klckj

waiting for someone to notice that i rise each morning

Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it is worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person's face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself and the ground under the street, and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It's okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.

-- Miranda July, "No one belongs here more than you."

you will find someone not lost in sleep

http://www.sendspace.com/file/gbtb47

--

"I feel invisible, and to be quite honest, my love grows stronger coinciding with my desperate loneliness."

don't forget that I'm alone when you're away
http://www.sendspace.com/file/dqptox

como park

Sunday morning and the windows
in my house of cards look
out onto bare, stripped branches and air
so cold between buildings
that even flight is stolen from birds,
but it’s not winter,
and it’s not the city.
At the bar on Friday,
I realized partway through the night
that when I forgot to talk,
I was making the people and the music,
the spinning lights and your face
that I watched when you weren’t looking
into a poem, writing lines in my head
that I've mostly forgotten.
I remember thinking how odd
it was to be caught in a stranger’s
photograph, the camera flash
on the dance floor pinning
me forever in the picture’s background,
an accidental, incidental
extra in a reality that was not mine,
and I wonder now if I became a part
of your life even for a second, because I wanted
so badly the shine of the sky
and the orange of the koi
and the spilled cranberry juice
to not be fugitive memories to you
but part of a remembered day
made more perfect in its simplicity
because your face is already fading
in between one hit of lightning and another,
the tornadoes swarming above us
that will not funnel down to Nicollet Avenue
just because you told me so,
and the kiss that never happened
a secret thought to both of us, what
I needed the most when your daughter took my hand
as she walked between us outside the monkey house.
And in here today, the bittersweet
blurs my quiet breathing
and these unanswerable words that must fill
the distance between your house and mine,
your hands and mine, because I am not there
to give you anything else.

--

. . . because desire is always embarrassing.

paradise

The summer chill at the beginning of day is dark and humid, caught in a second of disorder, the mourning doves drinking from muddy alley puddles as the rain bores little holes in their bodies, the mathematics of flight leaking from them onto the soaked gravel. An hour ago in the mirror I was falling into my own arms, listening to a Billy Joel record I bought when I was 12. Don’t try to save me from this knotted past, listen: songs echo down memory corridors, shoulders are pressed into stone, shadows fall around doorways. If you touch me your fingers will break. One of us will crack. I am the undeniable result of inaction, but when the thief comes in the night, I will cheerfully load him up with everything you ever gave to me: the Rothko dish, the coasters with the floating circles, the skeleton watch, the glass bird with a tiny red heart that will never beat.

Yesterday was the time in-between, today is the during, tomorrow will be a neat progression of tenses with no end of verbs in sight. I too was created in eternal haste. Black brackish coffee and pancreatic enzyme tablets, the results of inaction on a partly cloudy day, the dehumidifier chugging in the bedroom. Now that I'm the object of your contempt, I sleep much better. You tell me that I cannot be depicted and you cannot be claimed. You will never be mine and because of this, my voice goes from one end of the earth to the other but is not heard. In this forged paradise, the angel of death eats cherries from the tree of life and becomes a hallucination of himself, spitting the pits into the hole to heaven where my name sounds like something I can't spell. I take in chestfuls of chilly summer air from 1982, so clotted by a future of eternal love that I can’t breathe out.

nothing

nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing it never even got started

.

they got a name for the winners in the world
I want a name when I lose
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qx5n49

forgery

The dryer running in the kitchen fogs up the window in the living room. The dusk deepens until it’s the color of a hole. What if I could hear the weight that burrows all the trees down into rain? What if I could hear every time you close your back door, each instance when something is suddenly complete? But my hands are over my ears and there is no later beyond what has already ended. Across the street, rain rolls off car roofs. And yes, it's nice in here, the blur and the eternal fatigue, the facts of loss, the delay becoming an emblem I sew on my shirtsleeve. Must I forgive you and pretend that nothing's been won or lost? My alibis are tired. My promises are tired. Nothing but the highest full moon of winter will relieve this worry. It will make time stop, we can go back.

.

dumbstruck and diving for cover
http://www.sendspace.com/file/4x7ze3

.

even you, yesterday / you had to ask me where it was at
http://www.sendspace.com/file/qxfptw

.

if I keep walking towards forgiveness / will I find you there?
http://www.sendspace.com/file/2g9why

.

the love you don't give words to / the love you give away
http://www.sendspace.com/file/tlwbtb

laughingstock theater (rev 1)

ACT I. AN UNFORTUNATE ACCIDENT BROUGHT US HERE
From the memoirs of a flooded river, I steal the words that mean death and drown all the lovers who broke my heart. Suddenly my life is pilfered by a dramatic production of itself. I walk through my front door and find that my house has been remodeled into a minimalist theater by a crew of aphasic postmodernists. The script is etched on the insides of thousands of light bulbs pulverized on the stage by unruly set decorators. The plot coughs nervously from the wings.

ACT II. ANY EXPLOSION BIRTHS A NEW LANGUAGE
You are spectral, adding to the unique spectacle, and you split my spine with one word, and a look, and then a look away. You told me that appearing breathless was a sure way to win your heart, but I don’t want your heart, I want your monosyllables, those murmurings that you let fall to the floor and I collect and order into sentences about how much you love me. What do you think all my kneeling’s about? If I did not make myself so laughable, maybe I could stand up now, and, with uncharacteristic directness, disappear into a hasty generalization.

INTERMISSION
I’m not drunk but maybe I should be.

ACT III. NOTHING CAN EVER BE SAID ALOUD
Then, in an act of existential nostalgia, night falls. The theater abruptly goes dark, and the red glow of the EXIT signs trails across our faces. The silver moon hangs on a black cord, discothequeing our dreamland. I sugar the plastic trees for moths; fireflies flash their arcane conversations. The telephone semaphores its voicemail.

ACT IV. A BIG MESS LEAVES US HERE
Day breaks. The sky above is flood-lit with blue. The breakfast table is laid with a cool lake. I try to sneak out of my life at last, but my shaky hands blur the map. Did you whisper stay awhile? Or was it weigh your lies? I cannot even go back to bed, the bed hops and hops like it’s jumping rope. Why not let exorcisms burn in the sun with the rest of us? The lake on the table is gin-clear and glinting. This is no kind of conclusion. I can’t turn away from you. Give me your hands so you can’t wave goodbye.

oblation #2 (rev 2)

The April rain you wake to puts a chill in everything, the cold red brick and the concrete, the windowpanes and coffee cups, and memory’s residence where we exist as if our crimes didn’t matter, all of our theories saying this is not what I bargained for, the heart stopping for entire moments out of love for another, the bells at sundown calling the Angelus as we sat on the dock when everything seemed possible, and I understand now that plainly I have held you, and plainly I have let go, while my days, fully examined in efficient self-hatred, release their tall echo. I am so lightly here but so acutely there. Where do we continue living now? What if this is the place, not a chosen place but one we blundered into? Nothing can stem the steady acceleration of the past, not even sleep that draws the restless, dissatisfied body into fall and winter, not even the distance between the new moon above and the text below, not even that we are as still as glass in the picture my sister took of us, a yesterday we find almost impossible to lift.

.

call me a lover / tell me another
http://www.sendspace.com/file/6icshe

oblation #2

The April rain you wake to puts a chill in everything, the cold red brick and the concrete, the bustling leaves and memory’s residence where we exist as if our crimes didn't matter, all of our theories saying this is not what I bargained for, the heart stopping for entire moments out of love for another, the flowers pointing to themselves when everything seemed possible, and I understand now that plainly I have held you, the careful lettering of purple notes telling me so. I am so lightly here but so acutely there. Nothing can stem the steady acceleration of the past, not even sleep that draws the restless, dissatisfied body into fall and winter, not even the hot, tense dreams we wake from to find that we're still just past the world's edge, jumbled and directionless.

the translation of static (rev 3)

There are stars in cornfields called fireflies. The moon is ventriloquial for the sun. There are love affairs that are like a wind caught between roofs. The trunk of a Russian olive tree is wrapped in chicken wire so it won't sag. A white rain falls into your eyes and eventually your face becomes more like your own. I speak in the language of parrots. These are my contents, wrapped in clean linens: the fortissimo of your voice caught in a feedback knot, a benediction said for me in code, a body broken into many countries, a heart that is nothing but a small fist of agonies. The mute pressure of dusk rises. These are the sedimentary years, when who I am drifts down into the rusty wreck of who I used to be.

the translation of static (rev 2)

There are stars in cornfields called fireflies. The moon is ventriloquial for the sun. There are love affairs that are like a wind caught between roofs. The trunk of a Russian olive tree is wrapped in chicken wire so it won't sag. Any explosion births a new language, although it can never be said aloud. In London, there is a hypothetical museum with a curator who is a horse in fairy tales. These are my contents, wrapped in clean linens: the fortissimo of your voice caught in a feedback knot, a benediction said for me in code, a body broken into many countries, a heart that is nothing but a small fist of agonies. The mute pressure of dusk rises. These are the sedimentary years, when who I am drifts down into the rusty wreck of who I used to be.

the translation of static (rev 1)

There are stars in cornfields called fireflies. The moon is ventriloquial for the sun. Even open screened windows keep tigers out. There are love affairs that are like a wind caught between roofs. The trunk of a Russian olive tree is wrapped in chicken wire so it won't sag. Any explosion births a new language, although it can never be said aloud. In London, there is a hypothetical museum with a curator who is a horse in fairy tales. These are my contents, wrapped in clean linens: your voice caught in a feedback knot, a collapsed map of a cemetery of suicides, a body broken into many countries, a fistful of sugar that I pour in your mouth. The mute pressure of dusk rises. These are the sedimentary years, when who I am drifts down into the rusty wreck of who I used to be.

.

baby see how I been living / velvet curtains on the windows too
http://www.sendspace.com/file/mogs10

the neighborhood

the translation of static

1.
There are stars in cornfields called fireflies.

2.
The moon is ventriloquial for the sun.

3.
Even open screened windows keep tigers out.

4.
There are love affairs that are like a wind caught between roofs.

5.
The trunk of a Russian olive tree is wrapped in chicken wire so it won't sag.

6.
Any explosion births a new language, although it can never be said aloud.

7.
In London, there is a hypothetical museum with a curator who is a horse in fairy tales.

8.
A movie wobbles on the reel, causing distracted actors.

9.
These are my contents, wrapped in clean linens: voices collected from disrupted sleep, a folded map of clouds on a lake, a body broken into many countries, a fistful of sugar.

10.
Years are spent eloping from the same barstool. Jackalopian dancing is forbidden.