Postcard 96

Today is a day of disdain. Please, goddammit, don't talk to me.
My hands, they hurt are sore, are tight, are stiff, are pain.
The air is crisp, the ground is steaming hard.
My empty hands are filled with strain. Desire.
Reason is to desire, irrelevant. My never-silent hands speak in open-closing pain.
They are screaming to create: that never filled desire that only grasps at soon-to-be.
Create: to paint, to ply to press, to pull up weeds, create a patch.
Bending fingers toward a thing or lack, the sweat and grip of pulling time into the now,
into a never satisfying was.
To create: the belly urge to hold in palm the beauty of 'to be'.
To create: is to, at least, participate. To draw up hot what cooling words cannot.
To finger-dig, to feel nails drawn back with smooth flesh resist. Those fingernail nerves that pass all through.
To plow, to sew, to reap to burn.
To skin to skin apprehend your passing beauty, the beauty I have hand in, in the holding, in the letting go.
In autumnal beauty held in pain, for a moment we substantiate, and then again again again, desire.

Postcard 95

When I, strong armed, roll up my sleeves, Look out!

The earth, it bulges with my gravity

When I crack my eyes steel blue, beware.

I milk stones for sweetness,  draw rainbow eyes and bent teeth smiles.

Despite yourself, you see my dog, a natural beast on line

Her teeth are cat, her hackles sharp as precipice

Her joy a deathly joy. Look out!

Here come my friend all shaking like liquid stones

They truck in no poor company, My friends

 -- my many knuckled friends --move blood as quick fierce as family

Behind you, are my two sons, unknown as uncut wood

and my daughter -- a Diana-- a revealed mystery

The huntress in the woods, flushing fear like rattle-antlered deer

Kneel. Obsequiate - my wife, flesh bound, is worth but me

She draws more than space, dark night, even she is terrified

When you drown, she will be the sea

Her name is Awe

and mine is Word

When I tug at my sleeves, look out!

Postcard 85

When they came for me, it was late night like always. They awoke me from a recurring dream. Do not ask them why they don't sleep nights. Inquiries only makes them hit harder. I do not care if they have guilt (if they did, they should quit).They have only been waiting for the freedom. Law makes for insipid morality.
When they threw me in the room, I was happy. That bright windowless room. I wanted to lick the walls. I wanted to taste the blood, the sweat, the piss of my dream family. Only the worthy pass through those rooms. Only the worthy are pulled out of bed, are stripped, are truncheoned. Only the worthy are up to answering their impossible questions. They may be dumb as pigs, but somehow they can sniff out the worthy. I could not lick those slick shining walls, chained as I was to the table, but when my teeth flew out and onto the floor, I grinned.
I was the least of these. The beauty of a true pride, the confused, the innocent, the weary fighters, the blood-handed and the bargaining.
This is the recurring dream that wakes me as they come already, not yet arriving. Every bullet, every rubber hose and pipe, every noose, every cane field, every open airplane has found its true mark on the best of us.
Is it true?
I sit up in bed and turn on the bright lights and look around at the history that flow and I swear that I will do whatever I do, and I will risk, as I must, with love. The only thing that counts worthwhile.

Postcard 77

When they say danger, well what is safe? Is safety destroy-create? No, safety is sterility. And where you may say destroy-create, which is forever yes, they will say no, obliterate. Where shall we live? In something called a house? And if we must move, then we must drive. We must have drive and then success, which we know, but they will name arrival (at a wasteland), clothed, prepared and stranded. We know this dream, the lotus dream of constant invitation. We must prop open eyes and use legs unbuckling to carry them that would be us.The only dream bigger than our myths is success. When they say secure, they mean invest. Well, cash is the only lie bigger than the fictions we make with stone and gel and sound and ink and pen. The lie of the present, future-bent. An open car on a desert trip. Sometimes we are right to boo,and sometimes it is good to burn and to watch the dishonesty: When they say danger, they mean we, the honest liars. When they say secure, invest, they mean forget. When they sing praise, exalt, show up at vigil, mourn, respect -- what they mean is they are terrified of destroy-create, are terrified of terrified, of waking up and clarity and please please please forget.