Postcard 141

All things, beings all, are born clean into a well worn and weary world.
Stars glow red and every cell has death drive.

Rivers -- metal ochers, metal yellows -- like bony fingers reach to sea.
Big waters barely beat.
Big waters filled with skeletons of all things,
like old coral, oily algae green
And the surface is a sick skin,
a fever sweat for greasy rain-starved winds.

A new clear creature comes up from mud,
and squirms grub-like from sulfuric chrysalis of debris
She does not slouch toward pestilent future or from corruption of past
For a moment she is pure and unseen
She opens eyes as blue as treasure-held fragments of that old sky.

This world is putrid. Each step sucks up the smell of sour decay
each shuffle through the plastic shells of shotgun wadding,
old bent butts, of straws and bottlecaps, clears infertile crust away.
Each step pushes blood poison, brown and veined, up her legs

She moves to exhausted alkali -- the world as desiccate as leaves
She moves through and to a place where other beings might be or might have been:
the strange mindful intention of piled debris,
hard ground stained by dirty fires,
corners strewn with dried black chips of feces

Everything has one property to possess and share: every being has a smell
Every sheet of paper, bound and stacked, every book, broken spined and outcast --
all dim deciduous memories, trustee of image and word --
withers in the infrared and speckles green in mildew damp
and smells like old pornography

All things, beings all, are death drive born
seeking, starving for the echo source
of clear and bright and clean

Postcard 140

 

Like everyone and everything, 

she was born of dusty effluent of morbid stars. 

She was carbon bright. 

The filament bridged and glowed. 

Like everyone and everything, 

she was born a bursting prophet of origin and eventuality. 

Rare to rich over-burn. 

She was born a single treed forest burnt crisp. 

Like everyone and everything 

she was born tossed and caught. 

From blank non-being into being. 

From blinding gestate to cold dark earth. A stone. 

Like everyone and everything, 

she was born to veiled nursemaids of pain and pleasure. 

One was called need, 

the other, want. 

Like everyone and everything, 

she was born crying out, to mark short span of being. 

Compressed together, 

screaming apart. 

Like everyone and everything, 

she was born fissured with impurity. 

That is the crack and split of 

pyrophytic seed. 

Like everything and every being, 

she was born highly charged. 

Repulse and attract imminent. 

A spark seeking the touch of circuit.

Like everything and every other being, 

she was born a one time thing, 

in everlasting experiment. 

With potential toward all else. 

Like everything and every being, 

she is diminished by neglect. 

As semi-precious as core clustered diamonds. 

As underfoot as turquoise.  

Like every being, 

she was born with unspoken name. 

Like everything, 

she was born without spoken name. 

Like everyone and everything that must be, 

she was born blankly 

grasping for a given name. 

Oh Turquoise Daughter.

Postcard 139

The water moves down,
and because it moves together, it flows.
Every ripple is the power of some unseen thing, above as below.
Every swirl an unequal resistance. Still, it moves placid and smooth.
The morning clouds reflect.
A heron, great and blue, an egret, white, set themselves like caissons
along the east shore, hunting down in their own shadows.
The water only has depth straight beneath, in shadow.
Small flies in hordes waterskip erratic. The tension ennobles them.
It is an irritant to look upon, as if all skin can relate.
The slight breeze compels the clouds across the face of sky,
compels the cloud reflection, compels the water too.
The small hairs of my skin rise and join the leaves in sway.
Ants, of course persist. Countless things we cannot see:
retreat of silvering darkness from the face of the land,
ephemeral vanishing act of each drop of dew,
birdsong and birdsong and the subtle speak of sparrow fall.
And birdsong responds.
My mind too moves unseen, and I toss back a whistle.
A whistle too loud in chamber of head startles me.
The heron, the egret, irritable, take graceful wing,
move off and away like cats.
Their shadows too, leave unplumbed.
And the water moves clear, without volume.
The water moves unceasing,
turns blue against the sky

Postcard 138

Thank you for the sweet oil of your fingers - anointing grace

Thank you for the gentle bite of your eyes - communion

And the quiet drinking in. The quiet drinking in

Thank your for the wiggle and squirm of conscience 

Is it ok is it ok - penance, reconciliation

Thank you for the held breath, 

The slight flow of blood and sweet chemicals - blessed blessed baptism

Thank you for closing warm hands, closing soft eyes

Closing sighing sighing mouth - initiate

Thank you for learning these words

For recalling me to yourself when I put them down - ordination

Thank you for the warmth of chaos put to order, of energy gathered and held

Of substance made relational, of warm bodied being holding true

Thank you for moving desperate through time to me in wild relation - wedlock

Thank you for holding this note, reading it in consideration, remembering me fondly

For finding meaning, for trying it though us, for being a being that can

Thank you for setting it down, for going on and away,

For packing up, for forgetting. A little entropy, a little death.

Postcard 137

Doesn't it always come down to trees, to whom we are a quick irrelevance?
Fitting, fitting.    With my words I am trying a silence.
That is a quick irrelevance, but it proceeds.
With my words I am trying to name a silence.
A useless Adam.
Name the thing of tree.
Name the sky scratch vanishing.
Name the water wick defying gravity.
Oh dare name the strength of sway.
Name roots subliminal and name their speech unseen:
communing without glottal tongue what is, what has been, what will be.
Oh breathing being Adam, it always comes to breathing being of tree.
Be a silent breathing being. Speak with grounded toes.
Correlate irreverently. Humility of forest for the trees. 
Silence still the word proceeds. Silence and still the word itself.
Un-name the thing.
Un-name the rustle of the leaves.
Un-name the hungry sunward lean.
Un-name the self and finally
let there be no name said or heard for the great relief,
the bow-spring return, the twang and whoosh, that final breath of final fallen tree.
To dumb still Adam, alone before mute glory, it always come down to trees

Postcard 130

Walking the beach on a day of many grays, my wife and I came to a mermaid tangled in the sand. She was red as a selkie and spoke only in murmurs and sighs, that we knew. We freed her with ease and took her out to the surf where we were equals. She showed us many new and strange pleasures from the depths. We were, all three, careless in the low waves.

So illuminated and rapt of each others' company were we, that we decided to take her home. The mermaid did not dissent, so we wrapped her up and took her to our house.We had a large tank put in the living room where she would stay -- illuminated and blue. It was delightful. She waited for us while we worked and twirled and flirted with us from behind the glass. I kept the taste of salt upon my lips. Sometimes we would just watch TV though. My wife and I took turns cleaning the tank. It did grow trying. She would swim about, feather and tickle, while we worked. It was pleasant but frustrating. Otherwise, she would sit on the couch with my wife. This was intolerable. Imagine watching your partner roll and squirm from behind grungy glass while you cleaned floating excrement. Judging from my wife's irritability, she felt the same. We got a filter. We watched TV, but she needed attention still, batting her eyes, waving her gills. We tapped on the glass and waved. We blew her kisses. The filter broke. It got pretty bad. We hauled away the tank and moved her to the bathtub. We showed her how to run the water. We took baths with her. My wife grew jealous about the fairness of the baths, but I wasn't sure from what angle. We bickered about feeding her. We stopped taking baths altogether. We watched TV. One day a episode of Magnum P.I. reminded us of something, but we could not make out what. I got p from the couch and went into the bathroom. The bathtub was full. The water was green but empty. There was something dried crisp on the floor behind the heater.

Postcard 136

On what land would we stand if we honored all our treaties, honored all our vows?
There are not enough downy blankets for this shattered scattered land.
What would be if our hands were strong but softly laid?
We could calm. We could calm slow waves.
A map. A map and empty rings. Fingerless hollow eternities
Drag up all the wire of grids and vertices.
Click click the collard cable's coil. The spool will snap unsewn.
What graft and crooked drafts have been obscured?
What little universes, glorious cosmos of life, have been deferred?
Our children? Children all caulked and cracked, stunted. Inured.
There's not enough whiskey in this world to cover bloody topography.
And what if we made a promise of fidelity? And we held to truth in troth?
What shine! Oh hear us:
Cynic slosh. Halogen twinkle. Nylon dross. Patent leather plastic gloss
There's not enough sleep for knife-light dreams

Postcard 135

The little boy who's parents were lost at sea
sat in the sturdy white chapel upon the hill.
Standing plain before two empty boxes,
the deacon spoke of Jesus' feet across the water
and how the savior soundly slept through rough waves
and, woken by the frightened crew, arose
to calm the sea with his voice and with his hand.
When the service was done the little boy left alone
and walked up the hill to the grassy bluffs overlooking the placid seas
Not a ripple suggested a wave
Not a shimmer betrayed treachery
The boy stood at the edge and yelled out
I do not forgive you!
I do not forgive you!
The sea remained.
But his little hand shook with the thrill

Postcard 134

There will be many nights of broken glass.
Its time to lace up high our heavy boots
Light will crystal-scatter underfoot
and it will cut. Cinch tight cinch tight
Is it true still that truth redeems?
In twilight, that will be hard to see.
Even blind, its time to step out firm and sure
The light doesn't fail. It's only dispersed.
Obscured. There will be ashes in the air.
Each day will taste the same, more bitter than the one before
Its time to spit out into dark, and step to where it lands
We may cry, but never mind the salty trails on grubby face
Our path is crystal clear
Its time to lace up boots. Its time to tug on gloves
Its time to step out into it and cinch up weary eyes
to grasp tight friendly hands
Twilight twilight of the night. Twilight of the dawn.
Its time to put rough clothes on. Its time top lace up tight
Civil twilight is so different than at sea
Only brightest start can guide in half-light
Its time to search in gloom to scan for what cannot be obscured
There will be many nights of broken glass to be endured
we see by scattered light. Pull on. wrap up, cinch tight and grasp
Walk out to the angry red. Is it night?
Spit bitter back. Is it night?

Postcard 133

What I am doing, no one else can do. Bend a few ears. What I am doing is mechanical -- a camera's lens. Catch, in every aperture, the sprightly resonance, always always at the corners - the sprightly resonance of love. What I am doing, no one else can do. Wide angle love is the constant joke of a universe in bloom. Recall -- it's all mechanical. What I do, no one else can do. I am the focal point of every parallel wave. Telephoto love is the I see you. Yes you. What you are doing, no one else can do. Close cropped, fine focused, rule of thirds. Allow. Allow the linear features to flow from section to section. What I do, no one else can do. Fish eye, fish eye -- peering out and through, bending a few ears, bending  light. Love of sky, wide and bent -- a hemisphere. No one can do what we do, but try. Chase and capture the corners, the sprightly resonance. What I do, no one else can do.