Cat's Cradle (Paraphrasing Donna Haraway)

If technology,
like language,
is a form of life

We cannot afford neutrality
about it’s constitution and sustenance.

The point
is not just to read
the webs of production

The point
is to get at
how worlds are made and unmade

in order
to participate
in the process.

in order
to reconfigure
what counts
as knowledge

Feelings Are Facts

quiet train
holding two things
reverberated
secrets out

eating won’t fix it
resting won’t fix it
grinding your teeth in your sleep
won’t fix it
singing won’t fix it
the library won’t fix it
the foam in the sea from the boats
is dirty

and golden
soft
a comfort, a distance
a blanket
around the road
a stick
won’t fix it

The Mistake Of Culture Is That No One Has Anything New To Say

We forgot what is new to say
Forgot what new
Is we are forgetting
together Is every time we speak

We want new, and we let it
Be known, not new

Shape makers, making shapes
Alone in studios filled with empty shapes and scraps

New makes us
We neka mew

Easy to say.
Harder to do.

Road Poems

Read Road Poems

Torn River

Monitor

Subletter

The key slips,
We asked for a new one.
Small indiscretions
are forgiven.

First Day Of School

Kid burning paper
In the station
At the far end
of the Hoyt-Schermerhorn stop

The smell is innocent
Smoke behind a pillar— mysterious
He is giving
A ritual
cleansing

Murder

Extract my organs and drag them
Across the keys
Till dark blood fills
The cracks

Pools
The pad is flush
The carnage splashes with each tap
The violence hits
The screen

Sojourn

Revolutionary, then
is failure now
the edges may have seeped around
transforming It
from the inside.

we wake like clocks
meet in irregular circles
negotiate minutia that only we can see
and hover around the same tone

Softening ourselves
beside each other, counting
emanating out
Eye am thrust into observation from the imaginary future
as we tap our thighs here,
and we combine, here
ink or oral history
movements, recorded.

Nest Summons

Tantalizing passivity
Make me a historian
My hand in the fortune

Our Reaction To The Text Is Physical

Glass compels me outwards
Pushing off
Turning swimmer in a pool

Paper is a different kind of summons

The constraints of the window
Control the whole
A mirror reflex
My fingers
Wander

Constraints of the page include the universe, I breathe.
I take in leaves far away
And insect murmurs
I recognize the pool in the garden
It is beautiful in its picture

It is a gesture
For pennies, not people
a receptacle for fantasies that have been cast
To come true
a debt extended
residue

Descendants of trees absorb secretions from our sloppy pads
Descendants of sand repel them

Closely, could they find their way inside though
And melt images
So oil dissolves oil

Without water
The images are mis-timed, though
We could never leave them in the sun long enough

Hands cradle, sockets hold, ear registers, filia connect
Silence of submurging and lifting
That comes with distance
The quality of the breeze that makes the leaves

The Photographers

I fell in love with you because I could sense it would be beneficial to my career
And I loved that feeling
The being with you
Creating something
Together

Doubling and growing of my visibility
Filling and smoothing of my abberrations

We moved for more than just each other
We moved for everyone
We instagrammed their weddings
We instagrammed their art

Find This Poem

What Is Ur Fear?
Embrace it
Imagination
Confusion
Doubt
Inquiry
Intelect
Psychosis
Precision
Limitation
Realism
Distraction
Enrichment
Dishonesty
Intimacy
Dissatisfaction
Vitality
Restraint
Stress
Intuition
Unease
Initiative
Agitation
Freedom
Victimisation
Greed
Aspiration
Immaturity
Corruption
Reaction
Inadequacy
Oppression
Seriousness
Dominance
Interferance
Deafness
Expectation
Fantasy
Exhaustion
Provocation
Struggle
Weakness
Turbulence
Hunger
Force
Forgetting
Failure
Arrogance
Desire
Halfheartedness
Purposelessness
Selfishness
Pride
Change
Constriction

Prints

Are icons are falling
as
Personal memories rise
Rain
Trembling in a container
Over
Doing nothing for the past

We are new
We are not sad, we are shells
Nothing counts
The day is long and light
curves
slow around us, into
us, as us

too slow— maybe
Missed, may be
We recite ourselves.
Up, palms grit on the old ground
We don't press our faces down

We convene
(and leave)
It means nothing

Nothing counts
More than now

She

I used to think the internet had so much to offer
How can more of more ever get boring?
There is only so much
one can seek to know
In more
In a single kind of more
Of more
Of lore
Of ore
Of glory
Glor
ia
ia
ia

Easter On The Way To The Ocean

The hair must be mechanized
If it is to be The hair
Always a prosthetic
already
She
Exhibits sure signs of growth
A plasma testiment
resilience
In spite of tender celery
Falls
            falls off
                             falls off the bone

The hair
necessitates mechanization

We both knew
The time
Of being in a bigger body
Was wrecked with pain
Wrecked
It was wrecked before we got there
And we were two and smart
So we always knew

2.22.16

I am Eve
But you bit the apple
Two halves of the same rib
Barely touching, now

Brushed shoulders
Solid man
Wounded before speaking
The pitch of your voice

Circling and confused
Never made it
The circle is closed, now

Death

Shitty
but it feels like
I practiced for this

Superbowl Sunday

it's a matter of care
a degree of care
time, reality the past

make forward
alterity
push the margins
fashion, it's the same really

believe recklesslessly
be yon(d)ce

Looking Back: Time Is A Visual Effect That Shapes And Forms The Past And Shapes And Forms The Present

my senior year of high school there was a kid who was someone who was always weird and bullied
he made a video project and i forget what the assignment was
he interviewed classmates about their favorite sitcom growing up in the nineties
after each interview subject spoke about their memories of the show, the video would cut out and the show's theme song would play in its entirety over a blank black screen
i thought it was bad and stupid work
at the time
disjointed, weak and underfinished
but i still remember it. and am thinking now maybe it was ahead of its time-

Paraphrasing Elizabeth Grosz

without boundaries of its own
it takes on and receives itself from the outside
which is not its outside
(this would imply it has a form)

its form is the outside of 

           identity

not just of an other, (for that would reduce it to the role of an object)

but of

                     others


whose relations of positivity define it,
by default.

In Summation

Fridays are a crisis
This blog is a crisis
This phone is a crisis
Ceci n'est pas it's not even a phone

Gender is a skeuomorph
Social-mobile media is fashion
Fashioning is a distinct kind of making
Individual-collective production

Fashion a thing into something other than itself and still itself
He fashioned a hat out of some newspaper.
There is wholeness of the material
Through neither loss nor addition the form becomes something other, to form
The form is time and culture.
Fashion bodies

Author-readers are round bodies
fizzing in seltzer
with text dissolved.
Dissipated into the conditions of articulation
Transmissions
Discourse is better suited to spatial metaphors
Baii
Trapped by the medium
Which plane is math speaking on?

The program needs to be taken seriously
stop interpreting my keystrokes with such brutal disregard for aesthetics
Sometimes a star is just a star
A smile is literally a human face, so this one is particularly disturbing
It sucks that certain people got the key first
I agree, they should be rewarded with 20 years unpaid vacation

Concrete Forest

I am a finite person
Fed lines
I let it happen

New the lifespan
Elder listener
Needle needed now

Dear MV

Your dance words play in my brain more to this day
And I’ve decided “carving out dance circles in the crowd”
is a way I want to think about art
-Mode of sociality- established unestablished established
Dissonance like nina at once

It was already going before anyone arrived—
The audience wanted and drank it up
And yes, we knew them
Universe tremors stirred dingly dongly in a time stamp
And, off we go

It’s Easier To Choose When To Speak For Your Other When No One Knows About Them

So, We can have our dual returns
they to us
and us to the sheaths of atoms that
before
we had to ignore.

Queen of the no-subject email-

When i deleted my tracks
erased my tracks
i have no tracks
i have my tracks, my tracks
 where are my tracks
i hid my notes
i got them back

Men

Who took the bite?
’Twas she.
She mightn’t have stitched it back together,
only
she was told there was a greater risk
Effort to know but not be influenced
Resign to the pale yellow
Do only half the work

Slides betray their own progression
Into, not next to
Sidewalk portions lain

A mind is a moving thing
Out of, not after
Open the door so I can leave

History

The first computer programmer was a woman
Daughter of a poet
Translator of Italian memoir
The height of Romanticism
Her name was a valentine

Summer

Saturn strode the moon three times today

and I haven’t even had breakfast

It is practical, yet boring, to do only one thing

I hold my potential collaborators scarf

With a flow like this who needs friends

Back when my limbs were golden, I was lost

I was wild

Trying to move bodies through an idea is a feat

Folding and cutting paper, and scratching notes, is less of a feat

The more you practice something the worse for wear it gets

I could never return to that shirt.

Carefully unsnap and reveal, disentangle

Every fray, spreads

I regarded it as the happiest of my life

Exploring too far down the wrong corridor

Nothing is a failure without a plan

Force yourself to end differently

Compulsory propulsion

Out And About

I own this city

née, these farms

Trapped by the medium

Traveling Down Clifton Place in PM

walking into and out onto a wide field

the feeling of standing in a meadow

loose space between the bones

I think of shimmery things, and small flowers

light things, stringy but tall and calming

firm to the earth

Starry Starry Night

Girl, redeemed by your blue moment

skim you match the blow

stand, vagabond, 

you left and were replaced.

I wanted to be let down more

I wouldn’t have minded for somebody
to thud into the glass like a bird

killed by velocity

and an honest mistake.

Oz transported us

Blanket of planetarium.

somebody sitting next to me smelled so good

but like his wife’s deodorant

they probably use the same one.

someone was wearing a watch, difficult thing

I’d like a cafe latte,

Blue, relax into your floor duet

This Is A Test

Fools with loaded machetes standing in uniform outside of whole foods

fodder for the say you wanna revolution graduation acapella speech

I made you cry when, say when you don’t say, does she?

Or don’t they

Coat, gotta layer it’s cold could be colder

This is going nowhere let’s say goodbye

Love I never told you, Mariah, remember?

This should really stop, no

No?

I really hate where this is heading

I think we all know, it doesn’t end well

How could it? Well, when you put it that way

I’m not ashamed to say this is a stupid exercise 

When will you realize?

Let’s forget that ever happened

let’s pretend we’re strangers

sounds fun I could be down

Text me later, hmu

Style with a battery

Bee pollen No! Ginseng

Incense is transportive

sentences get shorter

“Come On Home To Bed-Stuy”

The colonizer and the colonized

Late Night

I went to this crazy show
It was dance in tenor
I believe the colloquial term is “breath of fresh air”
id even k

Cluster Of People Lying Down Group Shot

half buried in a cucumber field
in Sadaa, Yemen

conspiratorial rambling, the rationale —
I've edited out a lot

This photo
taken in 1994
shows a starving woman at a makeshift clinic in Ruhango, Rwanda
where thousands took refuge

We showed people the moon,
Jupiter,
Venus,
the Orion Nebula

Shine On –
soft, enchanting glow!

we move fast through country lanes,
we sing songs to calm the collective tension,
flags painted

remote data
could not be fetched

I wasn't sure where the second groundhog was hanging out that evening
and it was getting late
so I decided to just take a walk
back the farm road to see

Star Clusters in Scorpius

police advances
a cluster of youth

my thriving vegetable garden

Just The Morning

I’ve always liked to sleep with books in my bed
It’s probably true that some of their knowledge is absorbed through this simple intimacy
The mind of the writer, thoughts, words, the hand, connected to the pen or key,
the ink to the press, the paper, the publisher,
the runway, the carton, the slip,
The coffee, the spoon in the saucer, retail,
connected to the paper, the cover, the hand, my sleeping skin

For someone who came alive on the internet, computers sure feel hard and cold
keys sure feel tappy
My long natural nails sure do establish a complication
Loud sound
separate from soft scratches
Coated on the paper, coded on the page

We learned to speak sex with a delay
Identity with a chorus
Arms and legs could not resist
Sitting, tapping self, walking, seeing self, sleeping self
How a version

I wonder about a chat room that could smell like a shower
the aftermath of steam and shampoo

~*It’s hard to tell because the nails are small, but the polish is reflective*~

January Late In The Decade

unfortunate me when I’m happy

I just want to perch as a little ball at the peak

a doughnut covered in sugar—

I’ve ridden this trolley up

let’s see how I can take it down

I hate feeling full

I don’t want a body full of beans

I’m mad at their softness

concerned with lines, blind

reliably aware of faults

full of dust, powdered

to pop and swallow, bald in libraries

The winter when the pipes burst

Screaming into the store downstairs

Panicked, the man entered our apartment

Amanda in the bathtub watching Netflix

the tub was full of icy water, clear in a yellow way

We were going to meet up

maybe get some mac and cheese

But he fell in love, and maybe he could love two girls at once, but more likely he’s marrying this one, likely in the next few years

Libraries are warm places

they are open, but more often ignored

the infinite other feels different when there’s not someone perceptible encoded in bits

the peak looks different

the dough, I must admit, flatter

the sugar, I must admit, sour

this beloved string is my dance partner

this string, beloved, is an empath

this stone is from a shop in Oakland, 

but still it is black and smooth

heavy, really, so to invoke the middle of the forest perfectly

riding the edgy internet party

queer in Crown Heights

dosed in color

the living future, new moon

Stop, everybody just stop, and throw your hands up

and stop asking how to be alive inside an institution

Institutions are old. The powerful crumble—

Gender is over. If I say it is— so what?

I could tear out every page here, put them in a pile in the middle of the room, on that table—

What are you afraid of? What’s the joke

—and somebody, most likely, would be too afraid to press their hand down into the pile until it started to sweat and pool and run

dampen the words they could turn to black wet goo to dollop on each other’s noses to bite down hard on

I would laugh I’m pretty sure everyone would laugh

We’d all laugh—

and then when the room exploded we could still blame it on a terrorist, because we would know the truth

I hope that the ashes of pages would fall upon Brooklyn

Everyone come out you bats, look up!

Cough if you need to

the embers can get hot, and they most certainly are not healthy.

I wish this stabbing would stop

daggers, wishing, caught between reverence and childish knowing

realizing, freakishly, that the boundaries are invisible

these are reasons why I defend the past as the most direct route to this moment

immediate as a needle in your veins, pre-AIDS immediate

a needle to your veins

clean

safe and pure

wholesome experimentation does not equal death

Killing

The grass was alive and it prickled my lips close to the earth, with care
The moth was anxious and nature-white
I didn't grab it but my fingers
Rubbed easily on the body
Tremoring
Falling to dust, coating me, green, softly

Flame

No one wants to admit that I can have a feeling with a red pixel
Wrap my heartstrings around it down
In back where caverns grow
Black black
Beyond and all
Passed, one by one
In circles, summers, sometimes

History At Dinner

The smartest computer was a person hiding inside a machine
It had the shortest and slowest distance
To make between sophisticated decisions

On The Eve Of My Anniversary

Links can be chains
And chains as a prison
visions
flicker falsely
connection benevolent.
Links that let us spy
That flood us.
Swagging the promise that we can touch each other

Promise us you're not anonymous
Computer, take my hand and tell me you know them
They
A yellow circle
Press
And bend
Link and flood and fill