...

I cannot breathe with windows closed.
blankets become serpents,
swarm my limbs, twisting with the sheets,
slide down my mouth,
to make babies in my belly.

I give birth to three thousand women, fully formed,
and name them all Medusa.

I lock them in a tower where they wait
for a frog prince to come along
and be eaten by their hair.

I travel to hot places, sending them postcards
of my favorite statues
(for my sense of humour is dry like the negev).

I imagine my life if only Canada hadn't captured
my sweet youth in her suffocating winters
forcing me into
the serpents nest, whose temptation
I could never resist.

Better to have cold toes
than accidental babies.


--------

We chose this path of life in bursts
and then mill and weep and studying, waiting
for the next breath of air
- fresh, or stale (from fucking) -
don't joke. We must live in the space between,
go crazy for sad movies...
I can't be with you,
but from a distance, treasure your
softer spots.
My home is not in sparse rooms
cleverly placed paintings in grey
or those primary colors, used in moments
of unexpected freedom (leaping fearlessly from walls).

There are too many straight lines.
they don't fit the curves of my body
(and while I sputter, try not to qualify
these experiences,
I am still a child of the universe,
and somehow existing in opposites)

trying to live between the yes and no.

I like old things, heavy with color and shape,
my imagination supplies the stories
that leave others bored, staring at blocks of
aged stone.

Someone's hands. a spark of life. carved this..
I have been here since the stars were born.
I know them without words.
When we forget this, we begin to draw these
strange shapes ---

a manifestation of our ability
to not see things as they are..

float off in purple.

seek some rocking motion in the madness
close your eyes and try to feel
the spinning of the earth.

---

Someday I dream I might let go of the addictive madness --
my best, my only company in these dark and cold days --
and if I lost those words, or let them go, what matter? i'm full

of words, it makes me ill.

I'll try, this time, to distill them into some
more intoxicating brew before I spew them back
at you, and gaze widely, play harp
with a daft smile on my dirty face.

thoughts that come about when in yoga land.

graceful inspirations drag,
draw trails in colored sand
(meaningless when organized +
bottled ~ chaos
is my home.)

the quiet of many sleeping
minds drives through
our small practice (daily) for
the Final Savasana
(if you know what we mean...)

some hoax, coaxing tired minds
into a gnawing ---
hot tub. cold swim.
c.o.n.s.t.a.n.t - chatter.

run. now.

-----------------


these paper dolls who
flutter here
and there ~ causing asanas
to bloom in unexpected places;
the mating rituals of slugs.

(to make love and slink away
both heavy with
hermaphrodite children)

---------------

words unhinge and swing away,
creaking, come loose
grow wings and flutter off
desperate for the distance -
test envy, tempt -
with thoughts of That Grand Adventure
the will have across
the quiet sea.

---

call the walls back
make playgrounds of these postures

to find some aching movement
in swaying with the wind.

take back the surf, make
puppies, or find them, little and mewing
at the bottom of the sea.

baby,
fish fins that held string words
tell the stories of deadly currents.
our eyes will never take us there.
never take it out,
never go.

Alice brings in the daily catch,
decorates tea pots with
bleeding flowers... bleeding.

somewhere nearby my hips
build a home from bricks
(and thick oatmeal. raisins)
kept out some wolf
too sick with alliteration to know
he's better off outdoors..
better off to leave the pigs,
go veg,
open up a mountain retreat
(Set Goals)
for girls with self esteem issues
"my! what big teeth you have!"
(he thinks my teeth are fat)
The better to eat you with, my dear.

Eat tofu; not deer.
phone in sick. take the bus
out to some rocky coast
to climb, to sit,
to think of my aching hips
in another lifetime:
a knot in my trunk,
my limbs reaching into that
infinite hazy blue.
waves crash on waves.

break pace with the electric fire
to search the forest floor
for small bugs, pieces of dry wood
or just build a home in
a big old tree.
big. old. trees.

you all get fancy
mobile phones, to keep us
current in your lives,
just as though you're never
(ALONE. SHH.)

she said something about navel gazing
(misleading poetics, 'cause
if everyone were really just looking at their belly buttons
I wouldn't be so bothered. The iphone doesn't come
with an umbilical cord...it's sold separately.)

(and notice how my margins drift..
notice the way your cat moves,
indifferent to your angst, your guise,
the invalid things you say. ugh.)

so document your life in low definition photos,
that stick to your facebook wall like ketchup stains
completely eliminate silence from your life
you know what's best - or you just don't want to
(to know!)

I battle my depression with some compostable cutlery
and itunes genius
and music that mutters about sarcastic shit
to an acoustic guitar
(doesn't rhyme)
(who needs rhyme)

pretend we know each other.
pretend I want you to read this.

Worldfuse. or why a poem is not just another temple.

Bring book everywhere. write everything. no rest. words.
words till words give out,
deny words, so thick. words like molasses,
words like crowded halls and bathroom lines,
words like the quiet of cold mornings,
like mist pregnant on the water.
words like mountains, being born.
with words we shall conquer this
sacred mouth, full of spit
find a cure for all..
...all the nonsense

talking.

A bus ride this week,
on the short-bus that takes the long route
along the water,
and a smiling driver (who offers transfers
to those forgotten-bus-pass-engers)..

plays some happy Jack Johnson song on the radio
just as we begin to really cruise
(bouncing, bouncing)
next to the lazy, long beaches
(who, though cold, stretch their logs, enjoying
the sun and chill, roll around in their
long, late mornings).

and we wind with the road up through the trees, gaining
height, and stolen glimpses
of the flat water.

For this ecstatic moment, I am fooled completely

into calm.

Vanished

thoughts that spin in the winding up days of a short-long summer, trying to make patterns in that simple chaos.. :


Survey this touching story from a distance:
we baked in the sun, alone, eyeing
nude bodies like starving wolves, polite
(like eagles that eat small dogs of tourists
who, naive, never expected nature to be so
inconsolably destructive.)

The hippies who wander in forests, to lie
like logs (lay like dogs - left in
cars while we trip)
.... annnnd summer! who grabbed us by the ribs
took our children. took our fire.
(we rush to the sand, to relax,
lie in water)

and, finally, chanting with the be-lovers,
question the names:
strangle hippies
banging in hot tents.
make poems a priority while we drive,
and talk and talk and talk
this moving meditation....

that it feels awful to be drawn,
drained, and buzzing, trying to close eyes;
detect the throb of the earth.
detect the throb of the earth.
detect the throb of the earth.
through the cement.

our ancestors. they dreamed of us.
they dreamed this. that we would be here.
we must change the way we think.
we must change;
orgasms the shape of africa.

The River Ordeal

There are no long black
robes, no gavel, no formal words;
your witnesses have stepped down.

Here, your rhetoric falls
on deaf ears, grown-up games can't
save us now - gods pinch our fates
between the fingers.

Cold rush of - deep breath -
Leviathan, water, (so I hope you
remember those summer swimming lessons
when we were young together, diving
for rings on the pool floor.)

If you're lucky, send your slaves, as many
as you can afford. recall:
their lives may cost us ours.

Mother, they can't train in classrooms
for this -
Justice was never meant to be dressed up
fed cocktails, a great pension.
I came to earth in a flood of water;
to the water, I must return.

Intimacy in time.

The walls shot up between us
like skyscrapers in the jungle
to violate our warmth;
and hostile - the spaces between us
grow.

Furious I'd let -
my hair down
(as though you
might be the sort to climb
up, and let me tell you stories
of all the dragons I've slayed.)

I've written this poem before:
this pen is the mast
of our sinking ship.
(If you look closely, you can see
me - wind ravaged in the crows nest.

If I look closely, I can see
your spirit wandering
the ocean floor,
finally free of your
rude and useless body.)

-------


If you put me on the stove with

1 tbs cinnamon
pinch nutmeg
1/2 tbs ginger
1/2 c orange peels

just turn up the heat. Let simmer.

Soon my sweetness will blossom,
I'll slip lovely into a mug
to keep you comfort while you watch
the wind;

or the house may burn down,
and we could then be seen
from space.

------


As far as I can tell, we were standing
still
but the spaces grew between us
and vast --

like looking at you through water
your knees blur at strange angles
like a mirage, we fell into some
vague story about people who only looked
like us.

I used to like us; I don't anymore.
now we look like inflated pool toys
bumping into each other
at random, awkwardly.

I have grown jumpy
and bored.

----

I lift you up, carry you to the
bed, gently lay you down.
I cradle you, I wonder if
you would leave me, if you could.

I'm glad it wasn't that way with us,
we started slow - no one-night-stands.
If I felt like you were using me
we just talked it through, You'd still sleep

next to me everynight. I love the way
we've learned to live together,
and even if you sometimes make a mess or
miss the litter box, I forgive you.

Aeneas

I know we just met, but
you make me feel needy
- the loneliness of my cat, humming
computer, the lack of roommates, all
louder because you don't,
you know,
text, sometimes.

It's not that we have nothing to say,
we exercise caution:
new friends, like slippery rocks -
and we try to be moderate, but

If you were a book, I'd read you all night,
miss my first class, climb
inside your vowels, find the climax -

and my library late-fees mounting.

Sylvia, best read
in the bath, osmosis
like water she will sink into
your skin,

her madness greets Io
greets Dido,
meets Medea -
I'll write her into my
Tragic Greek Play.

her sorrows made manageable
by distance

rather, we'll talk of elision,
(as one Sylvia, slides into
the next Plath,
the vowels vanish
the vowels vanish
(her bowels)...

tarnish.)

I would feel better, dear,
if you hadn't, you know,
tried to eat yourself
tried to feed yourself

to your children,
the gods, well,
they don't usually love
human sacrifice

and let's face it..
you were no

iphigenia.

Loneliness comes
to Hannah
like the birds who dress
Snow White's hair,
fluttering, flattering,
and obscene.

those feathery pages
flippantly turning, covered
in purple ink
have the funny habit
of crushing
too-sweet-songs
in ancient
dulled and iron tongues.

Even leaving little purple
hearts in the margins
for my daughters
to find when these pages yellow
doesn't lift
that scrutiny, that truth:
Reading is not another form
of Living.

mulling over the holidays.

this game is characteristic-
ally brutal. calling up and putting down
flowers in the road
they say they're for the gods,
but i've known from the beginning of days:
Sacrifice is for the people,
to justify the death of some beautiful
thing.

In the beginning of the year, we're put up on
walls, in frames, to recite that Great Story:
So you see, History matters,
while down we burn the future.

i may be sitting
this one out, my spirits not right.
i won't listen to another year
of birds telling their children how dangerous
it is to fly;
my life was meant for simpler things, and much
warmer weather.

---


i scribbled down some words about the feeling
of living in the past.
(the fury of mindless conversation,
while we fight
to finish each others' sentences,
stuffing words down throats
that do not know our hands..)

the ocean is still,
the rain too polite,
(i heard, though
you can drown
in a drizzle)


-

While i was waiting to be struck
by a love that could move mountains,
i found instead
one that could move my mouth.

I think perhaps laughter
more useful
than large scale landscaping...

-

sweet friend,
my devotion to you may have waned
with passing years,
picking its way tentatively across the miles
like slippers in the rain.

Believe me, though,
our love is strong like the ocean,
like rubber boots from Canadian Tire,
it will be there, full force, four seasons, all terrain.

and you'll note that while our letters get shorter
the salutations grow;
there aren't enough words in the bible
to say how much you mean to me.

dark days

the records fall silent for a time
and all they can find of me are
tallies of rations
3 cups of tea. 6 hours of sleep.
one sandwich.
30 pages of notes.
four goats. ten sheep.
five pens.
five pens.

This will be swep over: a dark age full of
we don't knows.

1 bag of cat litter.
3 bushels of wheat.
4 bananas
2 bottles of wine
a prayer to Venus -

But we know these stories -
lives rose and fell, families
came together, spoke with the gods,
married, died,
had parties
and lead days away in misery.

There is food in the house,
but something else is empty;
I'll have to remarry,
just to feed the children.

september 20. 2009.

ever since first you wrote
to me, i could sense the twine-
ing of our geographies, and

i was called up on my hands
(your bruised knees) to speak of gymnasts and
the dance.,
(we twist, oh)
of old men, alone men
(they dance, oh)
near their mirrors,

before they lay down, alone (men)
by their clothes
before the smoke from the pyres
suffocates

those old-song-men.

Now you wait by oceans (where first the fire leapt from the
earth)
looking past those broken shards
of pottery (just another language you never learned)
that collect in corners of dusty places that
you've bought your way into,
paid your admit-tion...

wondering..

what i was doing there?

just rattling my chains, i guess.

the gods live in the morning

the stillness of the early morning sits
heavy and warm, an invisible blanket piled
between our bodies and the houses,
and it forms soft folds
over the water.

even the mountains are stepping softly.
even the street lamps whisper.

and the steam that pours
from the chimney of the house
across the alley moves
without moving,
in deep breaths, greets
the indigo sky -
a polite warning that the day waits.
waits for none.
(as on overnight flights, when
fake morning has come after too-few
night hours, and the cabin is lit
slowly: blue, first pink, pink first,
then orange. orange. orange. then
cold bread, soggy eggs, too-sweet smiles.)

i hold the sweetness of these moments,
hardly breathing for the joy
that glides between our shoulder blades, lifting
us gently, lifting without
a sound.

I pad around
in a dark house, before the sun comes
up, remembering
my life like the details
from a book i read
when i was younger -
the plot is gone, the characters
have faded, the places are distant
cloaked in my memory's own re-writing, formed now
to better suit my unconscious intentions:

i wanted the girl to live forever,
her cat was a dog, with one eye of each color,
the tree outside her house was shaped
like a mountain, it rained every day,
and the boy
who lived across
the street liked her back,
even if they never met.

she grew up, married
a poet, listened to music while she slept
and loved the quiet morning hours
when the earth was soft and she
could
shape it
with the slightest touch
of her mind.

XXVII.XI

we were ill advised to go chasing
orgasms like Daphne, to trap them
in some corner; to watch them
turn to trees in our fingertips.

if we could learn to sit, still as buddha,
and patiently wait for them to rain
down on us in showers
(of gold),
we would all be the mothers
of heroes,
and we'd never again have to pay for parking
or car insurance
or spend the night fingering each other
because the drug store closes early
on sundays.

word placement

I line our bodies up (your
hands, my fingers, your knees, my
back) and rearrange
them. I'm trying to make some sense
of this careless tangle.
I bring out the best in you (maybe, let's see -
your arms, my neck, your toes, my toes, my
toes)
but it seems you can't bring much
of me (anywhere - your tongue,
my wrists, my arms, my shoulders, my
shoulders!?),

If these parts were detachable,
I could line them up in flawless
sense, our syntax
would grind, would blossom, would wail -
(my palms, your palms, your hips, like this, like
this...)
but this is english, love,
and your subject cannot be implied - we lack
the signifier, we lack the
significance.

(my back, your back, your back, the door.)

In some other era we may meet
to sing sweet latin.
all the words will be implied,
effortless understanding - yes
the language yields to lovers -
will materialize, and you
won't have to say
anything.