Postcard 109

Turquoise Daughter, sink some ships. No man alive can comfort you. Let flesh fall like so much drifting slag. From that land raised a great wail -- alone and whole, sparks brighter than our meager sun [cancer causing animus, tumorous]. Turquoise Daughter, halfway flayed, the broken earth thrust between your legs. It hasn't always been this way. Remember that -- its your great pain. Let the great putty-men flake away. See the silver raven speak over black water's face. Sink some ships and follow her. Collect the wails. Sew them up in womb and crack your mighty legs. Turquoise Daughter create a scream. A scream complete, more mighty than the Word. Sink ships. Send bodies flaming into black seas. Crushing. I may not know to not fight back. Turquoise Daughter bury me. Use my blood as grease. Let Annihilation be your name -- create! There is no man can comfort you. There is no man that does not fear

Postcard 108

Only lovers bleed like this
Bite bite shoulder flesh
My pale skin is eyetooth thin
We're barrel-bound in grapple sway
Approach waterline break
Break break tension caught
roll. Breath lean into me
Bend toward break

You want everything
Lick what you want
Lick bite scratch burn
Your full arms your
bending legs your
back your neck will snap
to make me learn:
We can hold everything
but we're gong to have to
choose to burn

Burn tongue and throat
on all that drips -- blood
sweat barrel-rolls the moon
Lick lick squirm wrap
ourselves in rainfall
bloodfall scratch
scratched torn

Summon wrapped enveloped
winds of devils summer storm
Only lovers bleed like this
Only lovers bite and hold
Only the two of us
grapple wrap enfold

Only we give godhead, cloud-
break, thunderhead. Bite
scratch suck take. Leave
earthworms waterlogged
and drowned down
upon the wet concrete

Postcard 107

There is no lacking. Set it down

Put it down to famous last words, to dying verse

In this chromium dawn sky a thousand dark birds explode and fall again,

Sparrows shooting out like seeds in a firestorm. There is no lack

Only what we do not have, what we cannot let go. There is no lack

Packets of light, like the birds, the mind assembles a thought -

Just once to remember what is known

What is in the moment that separates the first flown bird from last? 

To know, to release, to let go that live wire, that green branch

To let go of what is held to fly! 

Of flying, of what bird is made, there is no lacking

Of air above there is no lack

Though perhaps of the crowded clustered branch,

Perhaps of the frantic chattering wire,

Perhaps of mindless tendon tight, but of sky above there is no lack

Put it down to great unknowns, of mindless pull: 

of fly and fall there is no lack

Postcard 106

Today the old blind woman said cherish your sight before it goes.
Today the frightened man on the radio told the interviewer he recorded every moment of his child's life.
Today the young man slowly going deaf is trying to capture moments in songs.
I did not tell the old woman No, now cherish your ears and your fingertips.
The interviewer did not point to that father's navel and laugh.
Nobody suggested the young man nurture a taste for madeleines.
Stop this madness, cease!
Remember every lesson learned at precisely after the time of its use.
Today I was asked to consider my early relationship to my mother, going way back.
There is no telling of relationship to the fluid in which you swim. Swim and cease.
I remember, I remember only broken things:
the taste that is tied to no real thing,
the flagrant song picking up any other melody,
the blankness where once was tug in womb growing cool.
Can you recall the yearning? Can you recall the pain?
Isn't this life desire forever on the cusp of now,
and memory just a slowing down of death

Postcard 105

 

This world will end. Let's not be blithe.

 

This world will end and that would be magnificent to see.

And the universe will cool though that will be so far from now,

but now this world does end, again again again.

The how or what is so far removed from purpose, reason, why.

 

Imagine! You have been selected.

As a ball falls into a random slot, you have been selected.

A panel rises above you, gray and broad and blinking.

It clunks a judgement, an accounting. Yes or no. Clunk.

High logic is at play.

 

And off we go, both chutes the same.

Is there truth? Is there consequence?

You've been selected, furnace tossed, old and rusted, twisted, bent.

Each ounce of carbon heat, of rust -- a billion atoms rent.

 

I assure you that now the seconds are strongly and solemnly accentuated, and each one, as it leaps from the clock, says 'I am life, insupportable, implacable life!'
 

You jump, electron shocked, and you gather and you gather.

And you surge in complexity and your bonds grow strong and stronger.

And a boundary lies before you. You have been selected.

You push through in respiration, random as a ball -- to live or to die, the same chute.

 

Yes, the world will end, and that would be magnificent to see.

Postcard 104



Let me carry us home, carry you for just this stretch.

We've been here before. We've been lost before.

We're surely lost but we've been here before.

When you are dragging your body behind you,

I will tell you stories to keep your eyes bright.

I will tell you stories that may tread our hapless way into a path:

 

Once, I lie shot through and bleeding in the snow.

The pain it scurried throughout.

My little breaths were each a short season of freeze and thaw.

And I pulled it in and breathed through the pain and cold.

And I breathed in the pain and exhaled my warmth.

And I gathered it up.

The wound behind me sucked in those bunches of crisp brown leaves.

And sucked them all in. 

And the hole in me spun like a penny.

And the falling spin was the ringing of a spinning plate.

It spun and spun slower and smaller and I grew cold.

The snow was crust-red and I was a leaf-stuffed rag doll crinkling on the plane.

And I breathed out and let go into a dream:

 

I lie alive on the grass.

So alive my thoughts danced around my body on its warm back.

And that girl I had seen but once, dancing and lithe, came.

And she sat upon me, between the high sun and I.

And I gathered her up in my arms

and her long hair waved about over my face.

And we laughed and laughed.

And then that was it.

 

And though we have who knows how much longer,

we are home, a bramble above and dust below.

Lets rest a stretch and if I may ask,

rumble up a story and carry us home,

Another life.

Postcard 103

It's damn hard this. 

And you think you might know, though of course you don't.
As it turns out you don't know. You didnt, couldn't. 
And have you ever drawn your long fingers lightly over a row of well read books in a bookstore in a strange town, smelling through your finger nerves, and thought 'this!'? 
And have you ever lifted magically homebound, a bundle of memories all yours from your stale aired fellow passengers, and the thick air shudders threat and you thought and felt 'This! this is it'?  
And have you ever been mother held, a grown man awkward in strong arms weak you know so well, and felt 'this is it. It's this!'? 
And have you ever captured stranger's secret smile, an origamied future folded up in a float away moment and know damn well wrongly 'this!'? 
A moment later you thought you knew but of course you didnt, couldn't. 
A feather's edge this this as lost as breath. 
And have you ever felt your mind slide out from under you and curse and wonder just what it is you've gathered up, what you thought you could know but of course could not. 
And have you ever held on for dear life terrified and sobbed and wondered 'This? It's too damned hard.'

Postcard 102

Our shadows grow longer though we remain.
To what end do we near?
Look at all our footprints out on the dunes,
a thousand soft crescents cut, the wind occludes.

We, side by side, tingle-fingered, hawker-caught.
We caravaners, hundred dollar ad hoc camp-siters,
commemorative t-shirted and fifty dollar fire-wooded.
We like to pretend that we are different here.

And even step-outsided, pause at worked,
live stream screen gathered, like to believe
that now we are released of fear.
Imagine that -- marvel released of fear.

That looming moon is just a roving stone.
That blinking oculus is just the shadowed sun.
But then when rage spills out into the streets, what or who presides?
When our mighty broad laned cities tremble and slide into the sea,
                                                          just what is pulling at the tides?

The air is odd, the sky is orange and when the sun
-- our light, our hum, our heat -- is finally obscured, it is not the moon,
but by the smoke of all our forests dry on fire.
There is no armageddonal climax, no horrible relief, no hands of god.

The sun returns unchanged in parallax.
The days the fear, anxiety in unending flux.
Without crescendo, we should marvel with fear and awe
that it is all more than just a single cosmic fuck.

Postcard 101

 

What stupid  impoverished imaginations return again to war? 

But Oh, its so extreme and brave.  What cannot we war upon? 

But ah, its many shackled phrases. Let's let the leaders loose and see.

Let's cast a new color -- battleship pink.

What else you got? 

You got that stone pitted dread, as lifeless as an iron-pitted meteor?

What else you got? 

Let's grow a new shape and call it 'root', a vascularhedron, like river and leaf. 

What else you got?

Fear as layer-flaked away as rust? Your prisons, your destroyers, your tanks, your concrete splits with fear, painted over with patriot paint and fever pitch. 

But oh, its so pulse pounding.

Let's set our watches to a new time. Measure life in graces and gifts.

What else you got?

Wars? What little wounded people acting big. We know other ways. 

Let's have some new imaginations -- past a second dimension of balance, a third of scale. Past a fourth of righteousness. Let's have an imagination of beyond.

Postcard 100

 

Wear your heart in your fists, hard beating and quick.
You grow weary. You grow weak -- that's ok.
Drop shaking legs to knee to pray.
To whom, or to what, should you pray?

Grace to your fear, four in hand
frothing before you and driven here
Smoke offerings to your rage and wrath
To smite is divine, most divine.
What can you burn, incensed?
Your pain -- a mantra chanted --
goes two ways, burnt away or fetisized.

Rise like cedar, rise like tides, rise like distant smoke
Rise refreshed with sharp white teeth rebuking.
With shoulders wide, unyoked the past.
This has gotten out of hand.

Wear your heart in your fists fragile and kind.
You grow open and strong. You rise like quick pulse,
like tectonic shift shake casting off.
Like a switchblade you wield your sharp mind.
You straddle canyons deep, long and wide.

Wear our good weakness like a shield.
Where is wisdom? You are wisdom bound.
Wear your heart in your fists, hard beating and quick