Postcard 198

We play the knot beyond the fray
The loop is destined of the bend
Wrap & wrap. Wrap clean to stay & mind
Hold in mind, yet where do loose ends lay

The loop is destined to the bend
Bind secure. Secure is bound
There is an end. There is
another end. Find kink

Find weakness, find crimp, find fray
Tease each fiber, Splice mend & mind
Hold in mind: cord is rope
is strand is sheet is line

To hook to spar bite lash & bind
The loop is destined to the bend
The burn, the hand. The pinion, limbs
The knot, the mind. Hold in mind

and mind make
fast make fast

Postcard 197

Some Definitions:

desolate 

    -thoroughly alone

    -abandoned

abandon

    -to be under control

    -give in

    -surrender to

relinquish

    -to give back from under

    -to leave with intensive force

force

    -pain's own action it cannot understand
 

Postcard 196

September, Thursday of the Year

At a certain low angle of the sun
the day's genesis of water-striders
glitter with inscrutable drive to eat
to fuck to die. The crawdads too decide
to leave their keeps with shallow scurry blooms

Batteries of clouds charge the horizon
Ancient, how many dragonflies have been?
Shooting over the valley's high anvils
bullrush, thrush, collapse, clap, thunder drives us in

After the funeral, I danced dirty
with with widow of the father who died
in the house-fire. All God's children orphaned
desolate, bereft, clipped and beating

Of all this we make music

Postcard 195

 

The time
is finally here
time to leave

The birds
are casting off
their moorings

The trees
are casting off
their leaves

wind
feet
rake plow


I curse the day
I threw a handful of poems
like dragon's teeth into the sea

Even there
you reap as you sow
every word its own demise

I skip
as the stones I throw
And do I wobble

I dont fly
What are these black wings seeking?
to flutter? to beat again?

Word to the wise:
when the waves retreat
don't go looking for the sea

Postcard 194

 

The Moon is weary of all this.
The perpetual motion and perpetual monotony.
The moon feels forever held in tension between the pull of two mighty bodies.
Though if the Moon sits in ts darkness it senses a third, bodyless pull
                                                      -- a pull to void.

The Moon certainly entertains this pull,
but it is just suggestion. The Moon finds itself in a situation
it cannot escape without plunging fully
and catastrophically into one of its two seducers or
                                                       ripping itself apart.

And what of the two beguiling forces?
Are they as subtle as they feel,
or is the precarious balance between them
the source of the feathery elliptical tugging?

The one is distant but so impossibly radiant.
It makes the Moon feel seen, but is the Moon being seen?
Or is it just reflection? If only the Moon could know it was
its own voluptuous curves, its own time earned scars being illuminated,
                                                          rather than just the other's brilliance...

And the other... upon this one the Moon teased effect,
had tickled blue -- with its own small force -- to brown and green.
But what was given back? The close embrace seemed more a projection
of desire. Now? The Moon hangs so tautly
                                                        -- madness

Postcard 193

Father Song
1 January 1988 Pasadena, CA

On new years day
the cold split of ages
my father walked me out
you'll thank me, he said
on a morning, a nascent day, a dawn
to shake the Champ's shaking hand

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

You are your mother's
son you were is this
I am split in your river
I see I in you, rift of mothers name
Child, you see you gone

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

The Greatest bereft
of fallen roses the bite
of time the sting a flower
float away, will I even
can I have I ever tried

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

Like the daughter of the father
who follows him into the ring
I wonder if I echo
the wrong thing

Postcard 192

This being walking barefoot on asphalt to spare river-logged shoes, to feel
crime rise up heat. That much closer to annihilate, devastate, words that chop 

Earth marked soles that coil a simple stretched plane to rolls
to body warmth to dim light to must to just beyond sight

Possession: to own is fuel to anger from which hate is to heat. You know
this being with cracked blackened feet. And

This being, this other one, lies with short toes spread then curled
grabs - kicks down the clean sheet. Where is truth?

This beings with feets too wrapped in bunches folds to see what then?
when these two beings meet, congress, seek truth, stain the sheets

Postcard 191

We sat and

then we stand

footfall footfall

climb hand over hand

legs strong as sheep

hot sun south side

shale slide stone sharp

shear face ever steep

skidee skidee

 

whistle songs

wind scream short

breath blister knee

there goes and there

goes and another fall free

 

precipice precipice

 

stone fall stone fall

all is gravity gravid pull is all

leg up leg up foot down foot

down knees buckle

like ice crack-weak

as water melt snow pack

collapse ice in schist

lithic split

 

carapice carapice

 

snow crash avalanche

stress and split buckle

break through mountain feet

chasm canyon stream unend

valley carve valley make

valley carve valley make

 

the ache the ache

 

too high breath

too high the ache

Postcard 190

 

She sits upon a pile of old bicycle wheels -- bent spoke and flat

rubber tires cracked. She spins How she is upright is mystery

 

She stays upright in mysterious power. Gears and wires press

into her legs, here and there trailing red welts and stripped skin

 

Punctured as a tire and tube

 Her legs -- soft and strong -- press

 

into those things extruded & stamped

dead ends of kinetic life

She is a still but singing ring -- the gyre alight

What can be held by broken welds on rusted pipe?

 

And does whatever orbits like degrade? Only

as her tremendous weight pulls in embrace

 

And does whatever orbits escape -- annihilate

and free? Only in her light release

 

Orange pedal reflectors -- a scatter of photons

in the asphault shattered weeds. Her feet

 

sit solid as Atlas and share his dancing joy

She sits upon a pile of old bicycle wheels

                                                -- spins

Postcard 189

 

envelope me

you fold like fine paper my

two fingers in creamy eternity

i was convinced i was the well -- oily and deep

i am gutted by that poison drink

envelope me 

ivory bright sheet clean me tonguing

desperate words along your supple crease -- aspiring

to the mighty pen. tattoo my name

in penetrating ink

envelope me

your spool recieved but on edge

im bleeding through seeking tear

-- smudge unto me

as i smear unto you

envelope me

with clear

drive me from you

r fibers -- rub yourself alone

and free -- erase me 

envelope me

my words foreign to you

muddy untrue -- wrap them up

precisely send them off far 

off into discarding world

envelope me unworth you