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.