abomination that causes desolation

"blank-verse sonnet..."

questions, indirect

too often i will question lives gone past;
i must begin to think of future days,
like: where upon the map my foot might fall,
what words might sprout once there i plant my feet,
what paper i might ink my life upon,
how, bound into the spine of open roads,
a freedom steers me out to quiet fields,
to sleep between the rooves of car and sky.
somehow i keep forgetting how it works:
there is no mystery left to the past,
there is no question marking its events.
it crosses state lines, leaves statements behind.
as roads are paved by chasing unpaved roads,
leaps landed by faith, books by reading writ,
so life remains...a forward, leading question.
----------------------------------------------

on the world

lately, i've been losing my grip on the world.
my feet are beginning to slip on the world.

Thales' head was bent to otherworldly things.
he fell to his death when he tripped on the world.

perhaps i haven't yet fallen to my doom
(though i've bled and broken my lip on the world)

beneath the moon i am walking Thales' path.
from here, that hole looks but a dip on the world.

the hole is a grave, the grave is a ladder.
i must wrestle and break my hip on the world.

i'll ransom an angel to gain God's good will.
i'll parley with a witty quip on the world.

every limping footstep is a passport stamp
i'm leaving my citizenship on the world.

i am walking, with words, through the path, through the hole
i'll leave a turn of phrase to flip on the world.

ghazal

poetry for you

i wanted to find new forms of poetry for you.
i traded in my prose for love poetry for you.

i looked inside the epics, i read between the lines.
i looked beneath prose and above poetry for you.

i saw you as an ark, carrying my flooded heart.
i stormed it with olive-and-dove-poetry for you.

i wear words like garments, you can read them down my sleeves.
and written down from wrist to glove: poetry for you.

i have pried at your heart, and saw it empty of me.
into its vacant parts i'll shove poetry for you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

i never realized what a fine line there is between good and corny. i think this takes more than one step across it.

what am i doing trying to find rhymes to 'love'?

because they give me a sense of accomplishment...

the separable soul

if i knew how to separate my soul
i'd draw it out like poison from a wound
give up the ghost and catch it in a bowl
to tranquil rest, commit it on the moon
and in that silver body, in a grail
far from the earth and its forsaken cries
my life would fester there and never fail
immune to those who kill and that which dies
if, from the body's moribund decrees
i could conceal the dying of my death
and so exchange the language of disease
to gain a tranquil, trance-entangled breath
i'd shed the contradiction of your charms
and shuffle off your mortal coiling arms.

valentine's day offerings

i wrote something today, that i'm not actually all that fond of. i am posting it here in the comments section. it is a heptina, which i think i may have made up. i accidentally wrote seven lines for the first stanza of a sestina, and just decided to go with it. i had to crack the nearly indecipherable numerical pattern upon which the sestina is built, and change it -- a monumental and historic achievement, i'm sure you'll agree. anyways. that was what i wrote today. and like i said, i'm not entirely fond of the product. i need a break from poetry and go back to prose. it will be nice to say what i actually mean, and do so with emphasis. anyways. check the comments, if you're interested in the other stuff....

i would rather

i would rather you live forever
in the well-furnished mansion of my heart
than with me, here, today.
my apartment is small, and
it is a mess.
(there are things all over the floor)

Teach Me, Benvolio

(an english sonnet)

o teach me how i should forget to think
do more for me than liberate my eyes;
though roving, my eyes see her when they blink,
in blinking blooms the face of rosy lies.
give me something with which to replace her,
a potion with which i could cast her off;
ever if my eyes again do face her
my abled mind her image yet could doff.
show me something lovely in a new face,
in the dawn of some new mistress's eyes;
give me the sun, if moon cannot keep pace
or an enemy, if you think it wise.
so let us crush a cup of wine, and drink
and there perhaps i'll learn to forget to think.

re: January 15th

started it then; picked it back up today.
unflattering to all parties involved.

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

i love you, Moonlike
vain, tidal, turning new
best when you are full
you reflect better light
than i have thought to cast
but that is a lonely
day every month...

is it fair
to love you only full,
to love you
less when
you pull me
less,
less when your
head is turning?

i love you, Waterlike...
moving in your dancing-mirror-likeness
best when your lips roll in to kiss boat's prow
i would westward sail you
forever together under
the never-setting sun
if daily you did not
snuff out suns and sailors alike

is it fair
to love you
only as you lift me?
...to love you less
when you are
restless,
less when
you are
drowning...?

i love you moonlike; i love you waterlike.

everything new is old again

in space there is a galaxy (i forget where), shrouded in its own cosmic breath that is humming the Music of Its Own Spheres.

the new men like to say that there is no sound in space; that, in space, no one can here you scream.

but there, in its own sphere with its own cosmic breath, mathematically, undeniably, there is a singing galaxy, perhaps from which we were all exhaled and to which we are all headed one day to be consumed in its fiery musical ether....

and it makes you wonder if there wasn't something to
that story about Xibalba and Greek musical clockworks and a Christian heavenfull of voices singing one song in a living, breathing galaxy, sharing the nebulous breath of a living, breathing God.

i've written...

i've written some of my worst poetry by moonlight.

i am building

i am building
my future
one
word
at
a
time

Happy Candlemas....

...or is that tomorrow? and i used to be so up on my pagan-turned-christian holidays.

catching up on e-mail today, hopefully. and making sauce.

if i can see your name in my list of frequent contacts, expect a letter soon. if i can't see your name, you should e-mail me more.

and if i can see your last name to the right of my front door, you will be getting the best sauce of your lives.

thanks, Tunte, for the blender.

love,

Wayward Nephew

Since, Eve, We Will Return

…And God, he made the earth from ash and dust
He lit the stars returning to their place
In dreams of Eve, He fostered Adam’s lust
And stretch’d it o’er with skin and gave it grace
Her body’s sails did fill out with a gust
Of holy breath; a smile licked Adam’s face

The holy heads that tongues of flame do lick
They turn to ash the deeds of murd’rous men
Speak healing to the sails, the seas, the sick
To fathers, sons return from the pig pen
Mud from their skin mortars a house of brick;
The dreamhouse of “thy will be done, amen.”

Sometimes we are commanded in our dreams
To lick and seal, roll a scroll, and eat it.
The parchment skin unfurl’d from candy reams
Is ash when our stomach turns to meet it
The mouth cannot return the words it seems,
Galilean sailors can’t repeat it

One day that scroll, like a sail, will unroll
A future dream illumined to reveal
returning revelations to our soul
that faulty licking lips cannot repeal
this flesh of living ash may take its toll
but your skin at such price would be a steal

How will our skin fare in tribulation?
They will stretch it on a righteous sailboat
To escape the ash of conflagration
Dividing their dreams between sheep and goat
Lick the crux of transubstantiation
Returning to God on a scripture quote

And earth returning to its former state
Sloughs off the shell of life like dying skin
With hands of fire God licks clean the slate
His Spirit over the deep, sailing in
With new dreams of life, the flower of fate
Blooms in the ash where other life had been

Since, Eve, we will return to dust and ash
Wake my dream to your skin; its smiling flash,
Wind-licked like a sail with an open lash

(poem; straddling midnight)

i am standing in the snowmuffled,
nightmuffled world.

i can see the wind blowing
in the slant of the small snowflakes
through the streetlight;
it rings me like a bell.

in the day, the felled snow
has rubbed out the world to its
edges; winter is a blankened,
bleached-out life.

but at night, the snowy patches
in the blue shadows of my porch, of
the nightfallen park, are
like windows into moonlight
like danced-on landings
for angels' feet.

it is a beautiful oblivion
a silent nightful of overcast snow
silver stars bound and burn out of it
the small, heatless fires of
my trampled thoughts
momentarily glorious
snuffed out by bloodfrightening
bodypeeling cold,
carrying away any good thing i've thought,
away into the muffled world.

...

i want to write with lightning; i want to speak in thunder.

any similarity to real persons or events is...

EXT. -- front porch of an urban apartment.

(open on me, a shot from the height of your living room window)

the Voice Over begins: one night,
for sanity's sake, i sat alone on your porch.

(...cut to my profile, pan up to your ruffling curtains)

and the Voice Over continues: you must have watched me
once you'd walked the flight of stairs.

(and the camera cuts to an over-the-shoulder shot
of you,
watching me stand, watching me walk)

and the Voice Over says: finally, i left, and before i got much past the streetlight, you came, flying, into my arms...

(and you did)

...you had no jacket so i held you for a moment.

(its true)

and You said: i love you too much

and: i'm trying to kiss you, boy...

and: ...we are like a movie. this is like a movie. i love you like they do
in the movies.

(and i still held you, close,)

and I said: no

(i turned my head, to the right, so you couldn't kiss me)

and you were a little drunk, and you couldn't hear the Voice Over say: yeah, but...we use real blood in this movie. real hands, real arms around each other. we do our own stunts, take our own bruises; we risk death, and cheat life together...we risk and cheat each other...because this deserves more than a two hour running time, and i can feel you in my real arms and smell your real smell, and i have been directed to dodge your real kisses...

(instead, you were full of soundtracks, and cinematic moments, and i watched you go back home before i left for mine)

THE END


(music swells,)

(fade to black,)

(roll credits)...

Penelope, I wonder...

By day, with words, you string us all through your loom;
A tapestry of suitors, rapt, around you.
When night stretches out, you retreat and resume
Teasing threads out of the world we’ve woken to.
I am Nobody, no name yet to assume
Till I stretch it on a bow and string it through.
I, your lover/hater, plucking out our doom,
Last alive, home at last, 20 years to you.
I’ll remember what we’ve made a secret of
And ask if you’ve ever moved it from its place.
I have come back for you, through Hell and High Seas;
Will you still mean it if you call me your love?
If I read suitors, strings, that loom in your face
I’ll not forget my Calypsos and Circes

January 15th, there is...

there is a symphony of rain
in the street

a russian ballet of it
dancing over the
broken phelanges of the trees

there is a bare patch
in my yard
where squirrels
meet
for war counsels;
weather has negotiated
for them a cease-fire

there is a thorny bush,
a bristling cat-o'nine-tails
the bush of a lesser god
bent with ice
to the ground
where no one dare
walk unshod

there is the pretty waste of winter
fallen across the earth
lifeless rain
choking the seeds in the
birdfeeder;
leafless fingerstrokes scratching at the sky;
spirit of the tree barely spared
as an angel with a silver trumpet
passes over, dancing a dirge
for the firstborn days of
this new year

as if i needed to be more emotionally stressed...

had a parley with a best friend of mine. i'm not sure what to say about it, or what to call him necessarily; i don't know if best friend is really a good term because i have relegated him undeservedly to an outer ring of former frienship. i won't get into it too much, except to say that it was difficult for me to talk to him tonight, and just as emotional as some of the most personal and yet-undisclosed things in my life have ever been.

i guess i remark on it to say that it happened, that it was today, and that it was important to me.

i'm not generally a crier, but i will have to make an excuse and say that things over the past few months (former best friends, letters from my dad, a gravesite here and there) have been (honestly?) yanking the tears out of my eyes. i'm not sure if i'm just "becoming human" or about to get my period. i think i've just been in a bit of a tender situation lately.

i don't know exactly what it is, except to say that i'm sensative, i'm ok with it right now, and goddamn, sometimes this fucking hurts, you know?

-p

also: its almost five in the morning. i'm not sure if the guy downstairs is fucking retarded, or getting laid like crazy. its either one or the other; fucking retarded, or he's fucking retards.

yeah. call me out on that retard comment. i promise i won't feel bad.

good night to all
and to all? a good night.

<3
-p