Things that have been lost and cannot be recovered.

Once, I didn’t love you yet, and we were friends,
in that concerned and confusing sort of way
that friends are at first. and now

it is still-born,
aborted,
clotheshangered and cloak and daggered,
a rock-carved figure motionless and stopped midstep,
turned to stone and locked in a burning building going down.

And you were once the dearest thing,
We loved and lived ten thousand miles interstellar in the space of twenty feet;
And now we haven’t one to walk on a moment longer.

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan, kiddo.
Expect a one-word telegram:
Stop.







posted at 11:42 AM

on the poetic devices and visual language of contemporary fine art.

There’s some
thing
about you,
The way there is sunrayshot fog about seashore rocks at morning,
The way there are seethru moths’ wings about candles,
The way you move sideways,
a sort of something said and not,
a space of silence left listing starboards there,
in dawning air,
transparent and so painfully painfully lovely.

and so mute—
I’d buy a crowbar to pull that golden treasure from your throat,
if I did not think it would crush you
with unbearable unbearable
weight.








posted at 12:03 AM

some other old ones I love, posted to this site months ago, that i wanted to "reissue," so to speak:


Wednesday, May 01, 2002
3/28/02

i see your goddamned truck
every time I'm on the freeway
which is at least
twice a day
everyone in LA must own one
I could drive for miles and miles
and not escape your ghost


posted at 12:14 PM





at the grasshopper, thursday (4/2002)

and she says I watch you
go off
taking on water
in ten minutes flat
in your diagonal gaze.
Oh yeah, that, I know, it's
not you love
a bit disconcerting,
the way we go on and I cloud up
divisional and excessive, a quiet tablature
tableing it right there
and you gotta keep talking.
I expand to fill the vacant house,
each clapboard echoing
my gaze, watching
you walk through me
like a ghost.
These cloudburst clouds baby
storming up a brew
I gulp all down
keeps me stable
and diffuse feet on the ground
so pummel me with rain the size of frying pans
I float thru the rooms here and
throw a few books around,
creak the floors
break some dishes and
get you cold
and shaky chilled
sorry
knock me flat, the gun to the head, the shock of light
end this occupation, this permanent vacation
the kind of poltergeist
can't wait for the sun


posted at 12:05 PM




posted at 4:58 PM

Culled from some ancient desktop-kept docs, prolly written about six, seven months ago:




missing you on your westside
how’s your girlfriend
we were friends
how’d that go again?
guess it’s too hard to forgive
maybe I’m just too hard to know


-------------------


throw me a line
I am a mile
of unforgiven earth
I can spell myself,
feed on my own seed
tell myself I’m an a priori
In love with me and no other, a feminist and autonomous,
--that propping up, a way to not fall too far--
but baby
I love you so
your touch, your sweet pain, your silent spaces
isn’t it lovely how you send me
inspire me to places where my words find no purchase
my intonations no love
my connotations no tiny crevasses to put roots down
and oh fine
I am more than this
tell my time
make more into more
you know
I’ve more in store
its the thought that counts
thank god
thank god.


-------------------


How funny it is though
your words don't fail me
nor do mine and yet
id like to say in this thin space of liquor and bloodstream wines
so luscious and gripping
I’d like to straddle you
pin you down, have you beg me
my hands smell sweet
baby come on
come on
come on
come on me you know the way I’d go it's too easy
been this way since I was twelve,
“since I was seventeen”
even better.
I could rhapsodize about your body
but baby
your hearts on my mind
goddamn my weak and torn woman’s soul but
your heart is always on my mind,
cliché or no.


-------------------


Write me drunk honey
I’ll finish up alone my red wine
a shirazi rewrite could be worse
at two am I’ve got too much time,
stretching out the line binding the space between,
my fingers ache
from the wet retyping of my mind’s eye
I’d give you words
you know,
but I think you got em fine on your own,
and I do too
I do too
we’ve miles to go,
pages to plow thru
before we sleep
maddened swilling drunk writers we are,
better or worse
you know I know our way.
you know I’ve come to love you
you know I’ve come to love you
some things are easy to type
so easy oh sweet honey
you dearest darling and still
some things we’ll never say.
Words, when spoken
are somehow too hard to take away.
Learned that the hard way.
But still,
if you prove it to me,
that you’re trustworthy,
I’ll tell you everything someday.









posted at 11:59 AM

I like this poem; and it suits my inscrutable mood, so I'm going to reprint it here.

Kubla Khan
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round:
And here were gardens bright with sinuous rills
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!
A savage place! as holy and enchanted
As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her demon-lover!

And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced;
Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher's flail:
And 'mid these dancing rocks at once and ever
It flung up momently the sacred river.

Five miles meandering with a mazy motion
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves:
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device,
A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 't would win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!

And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.



---------------------------------------------------------------

so come on and look here, now,
look out and this here is the landscape of your life.
give yourself birds' eye sight.

twenty years off from where you are now, there are mountains.
fifteen the rocks underfoot grow to difficult hill country,
where you can lose your way easy.
between here and there are several rivers leading to the sea, with both rapids and wide places and every other metaphorical morphology possible;
there are gentle lands and valleys where you can walk in the shadow of death,
if that is what you like.

there is another side to the mountains, and you have to get there, see, before you travel far enough through even more lands,
even further disances, far enough to fall off the edge,
which, i'm sorry to say (and you know you know its true),
is when you will die;

and where are you now?
where are you now?

triangulate, use that old compass your dad gave you,
and remember what got you and he both out of the woods when you two got lost looking for firewood--
you were nine, and he was late thirty-something, in the woods at yellowstone,
and the trees got closer and closer together the further you walked,
and mom back at the campsite didn't know, she was reading;
and you walked and walked, and it had been much too long now, and dad stopped and stood still,
(you weren't afraid 'cause you were with dad and dad could do anything, but i think now, i think he was worried for you, and he was only thirtynine,
was he afraid?)
and he said, when i was in the war, the moss grew on all the sides of the trees,
so you didn't know which way to go (and there really wasnt one way to go anyways, there was nowhere to go),
but here, but here,
you can see which side its on,
and so we have to go that way;
and after ten minutes
we walked out of forest that had been tagged with signage "dangerous bear territory" (I looked back and saw it as we left, a warning to people entering--)
so think carefully about the things dad taught you,

right and wrong, little girl, and true and false, and love and more love,
and follow the sun.
-m.







posted at 10:09 PM

Monday, September 02, 2002.

people tell me everything's ok, that they understand;


and i smile, and i nod,
to make them feel better,
and i think,
if i could peel my own skin off
i wouldn't be better,
wouldnt be cleaner,
wouldnt be free of gravity
to bend me down and break my waist against the pull of what is underfoot,
underground,
a kind of black hole
no one's had the answer to
since i was six
since i was six.











3:22 AM [+]
...

Sunday, September 01, 2002.



still have the bruises on my arm from where you grabbed me when i fell


i would not get a tattoo, but i might as well


ink into myself the marks others have made upon me in this life,


seeing as how they'll be with me forever anyways,


and there's nothing i'd rather remember forever


than the touch of your hand on my arm,


the touch of other lives upon mine...


posted at 5:12 PM