Postcard 144

Please tell your children that you are coming soon
Please tell our children that you are
Please tell your children of your imminence

Last night a sickly light scarred
the low hung steaming sky --
a load shot into the seeded sky

Tell me your children are imminent

In this morning's feeble dawn,
eyes old and wise, wings
spanning three meters wide,
the great grey pelican -- ocean's hound --
filled it's gulping beak the final time

And then, mercilessly, Leviathan,
oil covered -- a suffocating new blubber --
blood plumbed with mercury and lead
rolled its eyes back in its head, white
ribbed belly stretched to convecting winds,

Today is merciless. Wisdom is dead
Please tell our children anything

They are compelled to scratch
their secret name in open osseous sand --
our children -- exposed and bounded by
the scaly crissing crossing trails
of slugs, mucous webs

Our children signed a blind consent
and they will desert wander
they will our debts pay
They will grow mute illiterate

They will be burdened by old laws
scratched in cuneiform upon
chipped slabs of clay
They have signed away
in aggregate, inheritance

Please tell them their secret names
Please let our children know
the fertile laws of nature will
supplant the fetid laws of man

Postcard 143

The old birds move across the sky
they look down, lantern-like
at weary angles with the weary world obtuse
She follows them with long strides. She shears
She pursues strident and acute

The paper clothed ground peels up
and flickers like grey flame
Decrepitude falls away
flutters like old lace

Her legs lift ponderous like wings
She is leaving but wishing won't make it so
One by one the wings collapse and
fall along guide wires arsenic and lead
Still, she persists her vom'tous slog
near still against the blasted sun

The bird and her describe a whirl against itself
Then whirl against the broken back of world
-- all its armatures corrupt
its chemical sky collapsing into sea
The firmament slides deleriously away
Guide-wires burn and snap like filaments
Legs and wings astride as if willing
only made it so, they are away

But look, a smudge across the rarefied
A listless smile that is a primeval tusk
and two black shines that are
mockeries of eyes
The stillborn beast remains, a stain
and like a slug, consumes the world decay

There is a bright white -- a pelican
astride being of legs and wings
And there is a sallow white that is
universal consumption, a fade

Postcard 142

She comes to a cityscape.

The world cannot help but change.

Everyone and everything pushes out.

The city has burst unfilled,

a hollowscape.

This was a city of change.

Never the same stream, 

can't go home again, 

look on desolation angel.

Wide avenues lead to center, radiate

Only laterals crowd with argument and debris

No one, nothing meets or challenges her

but the blasted glass

ground beneath her feet

The sentinels are empty and everything 

remains is scurry scurry

Heat is frivolous

spent without movement - tangled

Everything pushes out 

against what it may find

looking out with 

city center empty eyes

She stands at the center that is like a weak star

Broad clear avenues radiate like light

did it explode? did it vaporize?

did it collapse?

She walks upon ashes and looks around 

clear blue. no second sight

The beast has been still-born and yet 

has lurched away, pushing out.

She feels the threat of violence inevitable

That is one thing overcome by another

Push turned inward.
She breaths it finely in

Her hands are metal black
what did she touch?
Somewhere deep, there must be clay and hummus
untouched untrammeled unstreaked

The suicide air lays acid down
from chromium clouds
from quicksilver skies
The earth pushes up its alkali

A shadow flits across her eyes
Then another and another still
Some ancient creatures cloistered up
ooze across the formless sun

The wings push down
push down Away
She pulls up her feet and follows
Every girl in this hostile world
needs walk on, every girl needs a dog

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