One Year

I'm smearing my tears all over the handrail
From patting the area under my earth eyes

On a rumbling

The green fields remind me of a love
My green love to your gray

The pink ribbon
in her bible companion
Matches the pink ribbon
in my isn't-yellow hair

The West Wind Warm Is The East Wind Warm

I am lightning rounding my relationships,
soot and tar
and resin

splaying web spider combing like a harp
bleached out beams, I extend myself_

almost balanced, almost caressed, almost cared for
almost covered in an almost quilt
burning our throats with being together
out on the porch in the cover of dark and sad,
in view of a midnight city.
almost exterminating ourselves
clinging to our almost visionary toppling almost safety

We gave out gratitude to the reeds and they returned it
We floated to earth 
with Sun dipping freely behind her mountains 
they cradled us in the fog that cleared
Between beams, everything was blazing pink or shadow
We were animals too,
the soft land glowing as we floated down

I returned to something built
With more waves and air
Vaster, taking up more space
More singed from being close
With more ashes to offer

I am running into someone I love’s best friend
I am breathing out smoke and talking about class
I am sinking into the couch being told to keep going, make art, sing, and find the ones who matter

I apply rosewood oil and vetiver daily
My ballerina is outer and wholly messy
I am growing out my hair

Stay in this garden
Sink and rise among the lovers
Keep going, make art, sing, and find the ones who matter
Burn your throats with the being together of being
Leave between midnights in our beaming city
And walk down our quiet street, home.

The Challenge

Youth is the early time
The before
The first

The diamond
Sparkling and inviting
Smooth.

The faces are drawn towards
The diamond

Towards the faces
On the other side

The diamond cuts glass.

Nerve endings burrow

The faces become of another time after
The glass

Cuts
The face

Burrow
The diamond

Towards
The faces

Diamond becomes the Glass.

Asphalt

This  
           ratty gray sweater

Another
                 soggy gray square

Patient electors
                             Pliable pacifists
                                                            Missed crowns.

The peach colored mother looks out from foggy glass
                                                                                 while
Repeating babies churn behind,

          Dipping and bobbing
                                                         Squinting
Yawning
                  bundled ligaments
                                                     Sifting,
          startling,

                                  birthing in that

      Black sea.


Ringing In

I'm only a machine,
A man
As they used to say
She's spilling from their lips
Like live cultures

My lips don't bend
Anymore
From the chemicals
Only
She's spilling from their testimonials
Lips lick declarations
Signed to the church door
Up
Where left and right are offered

I find freedom It
makes me
Heave bright futures
Currency weave blankets
Drip live cultures
Suck my own tubes
I
Find
My
Self asking for thoughts, you realize
I am a man?

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