on walt whitman knowing his body will decay

body, do not flutter
like a kite
in the sudden, open
sky, wide
arms of a wooden cross
gone soft with rain water,
a flawed bird in the wind

tether this body
to something,
even itself to itself.
tightly wrap the sinew
to the bone, coil it closer,
denser

somewhere
in the permanent dark
where there are no limbs,
bottom-sea stones
are hearts without bodies,
full of patient longing.
if you listen,
sighs, without lungs,
never taper

'all the prayers are sung. nothing is spoken.'

26 January 2009 [2]

[What is your idea of perfect happiness?]
A secluded home and a true love.

26 January 2009

[Which talent would you most like to have?]
To fearlessly survive without anything. To accept transience.

question

could I protect
the dark sea
of your solitude?
in the cold salt mist
could i build stone upon
stone, could the seat of me
sit happily, just outside,
a lighthouse on the cusp of
that unfurling dark

body honest

and what could i do
to make this body
honest, no dead compass
this skin naked thin
like it was meant for
touching, not holding
all of me together---
what function?
some parts of me
are broken, even red

and if i leave it wanting
like an animal stare
will another meaning
be weathered out,
whittle something
from this wanting

and if i pare it down,
still the humming flutes, tighten
every cord, oh
the angles must be perfect
now, for sound
is a delicate thing
every instrument must sing

almost

give me a white room
a bachelor's room

an old window
with old heavy glass
lets the air in
far-off crickets
the natural dust
of books in their places

to be cold only in summer
at night high up in the forest.
let the darkness be a cloak
I can take off in the morning---
and all before daybreak
we touch, covered and blind
eyes rolled back and in
we all need lids

so give me a white room.
let me count the days,
the sun sinking and rising
tracing the white walls with
warmth, just grazing it

seeing

Graves everywhere bless and

dot the land, thumbprint ashes 

from the priest, like a bruised third eye.

By the dug earth, is it Beatrice

all in white, all in black, emerald eyes

'La gloriosa donna della mia mente,'

is it her, by the water?

And how could I write the letter

that would matter, now.

Molten eyes, bubbling over

with light, please

do not ever
dilute this picture

13

"It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow."

new eyes

"We do not receive wisdom, we must discover it for ourselves, after a journey through the wilderness which no one else can make for us, which no one can spare us, for our wisdom is the point of view from which we come at last to regard the world."
- Marcel Proust

[give me the forest,

una selva oscura.

the lines on my hands---

i don't know where they come from.

something keeps etching

itself, a bird's nest,

an old dead river.]

harvest

What if every death, small and large is just a winter?
Like a bear's heart beating slower, slower
colder, but not lost---

Great trees don't have hearts,
only great veins, arteries
simple sap standing still,
water freezing up from root to leaf,
the bright dry leaves falling down.
The trees turn inward, living off of
what they gathered, in silence.

Make my heart like a tree
like a bear's heart, now, just before winter
now for the harvest.
Let us slow down
let our bodies search every cell
for every bright thing
from the past year.

Not so long ago we prepared the cold land
for spring, frost still on the grass
the cold and barren dawns. Just when you thought
it would never come, the fruits and flowers
blossom, in awe, almost, of their luck---
to have so many hours in this heat,
the air thick with life, with birds
bees, almost everywhere, such life.

Then the fruits drop away and rot, as the world cools
but the heart of things, beneath the thick bark,
beneath the chestbone,
there we keep the sun, the warmth,
we knit it around us.
So we pause, and remember
on the darkest cold winter night that's coming
there are summers in our hearts
moments in the sun to be grateful for.
Like a bear's layer of fat, like a tree's dormant body---
be still, and remember.

what it does

Whiskey can make your whole mouth numb
lips and all, if you drink it slow enough
a molecular branding, every cell
reddening, softly, hissing

Weed can come like a crown
warm and tingling on your temples
prince of forgetting, of touching
close your red heavy eyes,
cast them off like useless gems

put everything but my fingertips in exile

I insist

I want to wear a painter's shirt
live in the woods
hear the night birds
and when the dawn comes
I want my body in sleeping to know
the shifting of night into day,
even before the slightest light.
Pre-dawn, coffee's heavy flutter
into a white mug. I want to take such long walks.
I want to chop and carve and burn
wood, and build and etch and burrow.
I want to rest in trees, I want to drink
a hobbit's drink, drink it in with a monk's
pursed lips, my blood, however--open, flowing, drunk.
I want to stay up all night, with you,
in a painter's shirt, in the woods, with the
night birds, the dew, the trees, the drink,
our blood, forgetting itself

facebook [Tuesday, November 8th, 2011 at 12:12am]

Charles, I hope you are resting in peace. 

Just re-read what you wrote in my yearbook. How did I forget the epic little tale you told, starting off with: "There is a legend... A legend of a boy who travels West.. The goal is uncertain, but the young boy is destined to meet a girl walking the Eight Fold Path towards Enlightenment." 

After many twists and turns, it ends with: "The ancient warrior and enlightened one went to the room and found the book. They jumped out of Hell, read the book, gained all knowledge, and brought everlasting peace to the universe."

It doesn't seem like we'll ever find that book. Maybe you're reading it now, I can't be sure. But to have even a small part of the journey with you, I am grateful. You said you hoped my friendships "transcend time." I hope so, too. Will be thinking of you.

place to be

On the arc of the night sky
stars scatter like freckles,
dark flecks of old light.

Trees line the horizon,
keeping it warm. The sounds
in the forest aren't lonely, anymore
just another shroud, more
kindling, heat in my ears,
like seeing green in the evening.

Quiet one,
there will be nothing
more to inherit, than this--

Reckless

Bring them home,
all of them.

Let my heart swell
making room, for every one.
Break it open like the empty cup it is.
Let the raw parts show,
bright as bone. The many things
you love die many times, ways.

What happened was
in the winter I let them in
nothing else mattered.
I wanted them to be warm,
while they're here. Little
I can do, while we wait
for the spring, the pain.

[From the Files]

In a dream, I ravaged you
I knew it was you, in that sure way
you know things in dreams, I knew where to find you
like the right eyes look at an x-ray
I held it up to the light and knew
what your body meant
the secret sentence under
the skin, my hands searching
you through, slipping you notes.

improvise

Now I'm old
I think about all the ways
all the lack of ways we have
to slow dance

Rambled Eggs [on Life]

I keep saying life is short
'it's the longest thing there is,' she said,
(I don't care where she stole it from)

The thing is, my life doesn't feel
like 'my life,' this,
I don't know what it is, something that's happening.
I feel the past here, sketching it all out sometimes.
My people, haunting me, on the one hand, with their
frank, short lives, full of mothers, city laundry, garlic and heat,
and on the other,
frank, long, smoky lives, overcast days in the bog, the fire---

This life is 'wild and precious,' yes, but does not feel either,
somehow blunted in the way an overused knife is, or a cheap one.
[I meant it when I said I wanted the smoke to fill my lungs,
a warm dark, letting it in, like the ragged coo of a blues song
making its way through your body, it's what happens
when breathing dark feels more natural than air]

Warmth is enough, work so hard
be with the ones you love 'til you can't
anymore, that's how it was. How it is.
And when death comes for them, put on the black,
wait for your day in the sun. Or maybe just drink and drink,
and remember.  Who is to say whether or not we should

and what is this body

they say time is a flowing river:
the moment you can say 'this, this'
of a glint or a clarity on the surface
the ripples of the water shift
the wind, a cloud

and somewhere in me,
veins tangle
loose, tepid fibers, holding all my life---
maybe i'd rather be stone, just lay someone
soft against me

even this bone isn't hard enough, under my shirt,
with teeth as soft as eyelids, what would that make my lips

and here you are, walking around like you do
there you are, standing

(i'm) easy

every day will be cold
hollow footsteps on frozen,
dead land and i will walk
and walk, and see

and in the night, i will
step into the warmth
it will always feel good
and i will sleep, and sleep

Snapshots from a Train (through New Jersey)

"Oh, to make the sky always bigger"


in the distance, two male figures in shadow, crouched toy soldiers at the edge of the water


a whole neighborhood with that wooden fence we used to have, the wood dark and rotting, just so, soft as grass---a gentle fence, with a gap the stray cats could fit through


old cathedral warehouses, factories, windowpanes yellowed and fragile like paper lanterns, like a series of hungry mouths glinting in the sun, cracked and missing teeth

Float

Ears submerged in the water, seashell-quiet, belly-up.  On the other side of the world, the sky is different, somehow, full of faint constellations you've never seen, may not see, ever again. Think of it: the evening is warm, the sky stars and trees are the silent arc just outside your eyes, the water gently bobbing at the sides of your face, nearing the edges of your eyes. Float, like you have no body. Like a child might, before the body's in stasis, before we grow used to it. We grow used to our bodies, like the creaks in the stairs of your house, the soft pattern of noise they'd make every morning. The groan of certain steps in the winter time.

Float like this, not feeling your body, because you won't have to recall anything, if you forget this body now.  Float like the sky and the water and children do, free as wild storms, things without eyes.

We grow older, and want to be touched, falling back into our bodies, anchors in the silt.

The Last Day of Summer

She saw the kittens two weeks ago, suddenly 
three of them, still wobbly, unseeing, now sleeping 
on their mother, somewhere in the backyard, 
milk-drunk, like their new eyes. 
The trees are nodding softly as the day cools, 
the hidden sun now sinking.  "I saw them digging 
in the dirt," she tells me. "They look strong---
I think they're going to be strong."

The Falling Man

A split-second
of the ten whole seconds
that you fell
you were not a tumbling body
but a fluttering arrow--
black and white, against metal
a ruffled and broken wing
still beating, getting in
some good, clean, air

selfish

to kiss your babies
on the forehead
because i loved you,
once.