i'm obsessed

...with this song right now.

one month down

one month down

the starter wouldn't turn over.

was it the battery or the engine?

what was this to cost? we're a vehicle,

is what i'm trying to say, thinking

unmechanically. we're on fumes riding.

it's all in the reach,

isn't it. why isn't it

the moment? i woke up

pathetic, had dreams of the beach

i was not at.

didn't need coffee when

you didn't need coffee. shrunk.

i stretched up and kept

stretching. what is

monogamy? why are my hands

bitten, nails shaking? the dog

ran away four times. you were angry

to die in the fire, in your dream. we sat

right here on the porch, drinking water

dressed in yerba mate. where is this

or that? you ask. i stop asking

where are we? i wonder if

you're: always doing, i'm: always thinking.
it's against this socialized nature,

to stop. Cleaning. Mending. Gardening. Nurturing.

but Breathing clears the static,

to Sit, to Cry.

we kissed goodbye twenty minutes
ago, less love, more

duty.  i have no bearings, nothing smooth

and oiled, no front brakes.

i could go on preparing

my cage. really, the cage

was just a joke, a giant trash score,

a concept for a photo shoot. yet someone

pointed to my extra bones & feathered

heart, she pointed at her, at you,

the sky. she said fly, and i realize

i've forgotten.

1.11.06

messenger

Messenger
By Mary Oliver

My work is loving the world.
Here the sunflowers, there the hummingbird—
equal seekers of sweetness.
Here the quickening yeast; there the blue plums.
Here the clam deep in the speckled sand.
Are my boots old? Is my coat torn?
Am I no longer young, and still half-perfect? Let me
keep my mind on what matters,
which is my work,
which is mostly standing still and learning to be
astonished.
The phoebe, the delphinium.
The sheep in the pasture, and the pasture.
Which is mostly rejoicing, since all the ingredients are here,
which is gratitude, to be given a mind and a heart
and these body-clothes,
a mouth with which to give shouts of joy
to the moth and the wren, to the sleepy dug-up clam,
telling them all, over and over, how it is
that we live forever.

sparks

-->

sparks

“every material is a conductor when the voltage is high enough, since a high enough voltage can always tear electrons loose from atoms. for example, air is normally considered to be an insulator. however, when a large electrical charge accumulates on a thunder cloud, the atoms of air in the region of the cloud are torn apart, turning the air into a plasma. this is how a lightning bolt is created.”

-james trefil

i thought water

with cupfuls of salt

was a trick to discover,

a hat filled with cute bunnies,

someone cleaning ions

in a bucket.

the materials remain

disposable, at my

feet. i will trade pennies

for copper, i will ask

for gold.

i knew the rain

meant plasma, i mean

i knew the clouds meant fog.

choosing, chosen, singing

signs, they all swim together,

numbers rearranged, 

deranged,

defined.

sinking and floating, we bob

through crests and troughs.

buzzing and dancing, we flicker

wings upon air, zooming.

enough with the metaphors.

a high enough voltage can always tear

electrons loose from atoms.

a symphony of lightning,

i swear, birds dove into hiding at this point.

watch out! you have no idea

where the live wires were buried.

i won't even mention the charge.

9.24.12

of the way of the creator

from thus spoke zarathustra by friedrich nietzsche

my brother, do you want to go apart and be alone?  do you want to seek the way to yourself?  pause just a moment and listen to me.
     'he who seeks may easily get lost himself.  it is a crime to go apart and be alone' - thus speaks the herd.
     the voice of the herd will still ring within you.  and when you say: 'we have no longer the same conscience, you and i', it will be a lament and a grief.
     for see, it is still this same conscience that causes your grief: and the last glimmer of this conscience still glows in your affliction.
     but you want to go the way of your affliction, which is the way to yourself?  if so, show me your strength for it and your right to it!
     are you a new strength and a new right?   a first motion?  a self-propelling wheel?  can you also compel stars to revolve about you?
     alas, there is so much lusting for eminence!  there is so much convulsion of the ambitious!  show me that you are not one of the lustful or ambitious!
     alas, there are so many great ideas that do no more than a bellows: they inflate and make emptier.
     do you call yourself free?  i want to hear your ruling idea, and not that you have escaped from a yoke.
     are you such a man as ought to escape a yoke?  there are many who threw off their final worth when they threw off their bondage.
     free from what?  zarathustra does not care about that!  but your eye should clearly tell me: free for what?
     can you furnish yourself with your own good and evil and hang up your own will above yourself as a law?  can you be judge of yourself and avenger of your law?
     it is terrible to be alone with the judge and avenger of one's own law.  it is to be like a star thrown forth into empty space and into the icy breath of solitude.
     today you still suffer from the many, o man set apart: today you still have your courage whole and your hopes.
     but one day solitude will make you weary, one day your pride will bend and your courage break.  one day you will cry: 'i am alone!'
     one day you will no longer see what is exalted in you; and what is base in you, you will see all too closely; your sublimity itself will make you afraid, as if it were a phantom.  one day you will cry: 'everything is false!'
     there are emotions that seek to kill the solitary; if they do not succeed, well, they must die themselves!  but are you capable of being a murderer?
     my brother, have you ever known the word 'contempt'?  and the anguish of your justice in being just to those who despise you?
     you compel many to change their opinion about you; they hold that very much against you.  you approached them and yet went on past them: that they will never forgive you.
     you go above and beyond them: but the higher you climb, the smaller you appear to the eye of envy.  and he who flies is hated most of all.
     'how could you be just towards me?' - that is how you must speak - 'i choose your injustice as my portion.'
     they throw injustice and dirt at the solitary: but, my brother, if you want to be a star, you must shine none the less brightly for them on that account!
     and be on your guard against the good and just!  they would like to crucify those who devise their own virtue - they hate the solitary.
     be on your guard, too, against holy simplicity!  everything which is not simple is unholy to it: and it, too, likes to play with fire - in this case, the fire of the stake.
     and be on your guard, too, against the assaults your love makes upon you!  the solitary extends his hand too quickly to anyone he meets.
     to many men, you ought not to give you hand, but only your paw: and i should like it if your paw had claws, too.
     but you yourself will always be the worst enemy you can encounter; you yourself lie in wait for yourself in caves and forests.
     solitary man, you are going the way to yourself!  and your way leads past yourself and your seven devils!
     you will be a heretic to yourself and a witch and a prophet and an evil-doer and a villian.
     you must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame: how could you become new, if you had not first become ashes?
     solitary man, you are going the way of the creator: you want to create yourself a god from your seven devils!
     solitary man, you are going the way of the lover: you love yourself and for that reason you despise yourself as only lovers can despise.
     the lover wants to create, because he despises!  what does he know of love who has not had to despise precisely what he loved?
     go apart and be alone with your love and your creating, my brother; and justice will be slow to limp after you.
     go apart and be alone with my tears, my brother.  i love him who wants to create beyond himself, and thus perishes.

     thus spoke zarathustra.

with a body made of stars

with a body made of stars

pull the muscle back.

expose the slippery tear,
 knit it together
with words that coo
 and beat.
it is the chest and perhaps

something flutters

the location of my desire is
not
inside
a cage of bones or bricks.

let's forget

those deceptions,
they afford protection.
(descriptions)

the living breathing mess of
reaching and
                  burning
lives planted in the base
of spine
and belly,
under
skin.
all of it.

i am a body

/goosebumps and rapid
breaths/ i climax and shake.
     nerves, night
vision, fretful
     motions

to disguise so much
wanting,

i am all pores.

these functions move together:
attraction and prediction.
     circadian cycles/ spontaneous injuries/ surprise visits

the future hovers with dream ghosts,

lovers outlive
my lust and commas

until.

we shift
into longing
& exclamation points

i began
writing with my
teeth and tongue?

9.29.12

rumi in tall grass

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I'll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass
the world is too full to talk about.”

places such as these

places such as these

sad popcorn, buttery carnival

eyes, stalls of striped

amusement, a

ccordion

hands

waving with

fingers plunking change

into hats of buskers while the keyboard

gets tickled with french frenzy

the kissing booth sits

empty for a break

down or up

these are

sad

places

in a clown

full of cars at

intersections with

radios turned up,

cacophonies, flags flipping,

face painted with an island of

maps, a pirate's bird, the pair of sunglasses

blooming from giddy flushed

cheeks, a dirty dance with street

performers, i can tell

the secret now i

can say it for

certain this

place

is fertile

colorful and

tragic it is unlike

itself always the next

twist of the moon with ladders

and treetops you can tell it

to sleep or sleepover

or to slip away and

still it will

bubble

and pop it will

bubble

and blow

9.9.12

the psychic leans over and says,

"you're a witch!"

autumn equinox

part one:

autumn equinox rolled in sleepily, catching me under blankets, under the weather.  my epic continuous to-do list blew out of my head, a breezy day shaking closed windows.  curled in bed with gus the cat, i meditated about the approaching sickness, sensing my way towards the best route back to health.  take the day slow, i heard.  make soup, make tea, take a hot shower.  read.  bake.  stretch.

so i listened, and let my day of empty cool weather fill slowly with warm, easy movement, music and words, hot water.  i left all the shoulds under the pillows, to be picked up again at a different time.

i turned on the stove, chopped onions and cauliflower, hot peppers garlic and zucchini; junk soup was not an agenda item, it simply happened with my hands.  large cups of nettle ginger tea settled me while the finishing touches of september's music mix fell into place.  the shower was hot and long and i felt no guilt.  i picked up and put down four different books, finishing one and opening another for the first time.  somewhere in there, a private dance party occurred, as usual. 

in the evening, overtaken by sweet cravings and a desire to turn on the oven, i began folding together the ingredients for chocolate mint cookies, an established comfort food.  missing a key ingredient, a sunset walk to the store was inevitable.  upon arrival, i felt out of sorts, bright lights and people, interactions and choices.  somehow, i purchased items to make a linzer torte, and accidentally left without the mint extract.  i turned and headed back, this time without headphones and with a greater sense of focus.  back at home, the bowl of almost-finished cookie dough greeted me.

with the comfort baked into sweetness, the endless pot of spicy soup on the stove, the music mix completed, and nighttime all around, i wrapped myself again in covers, tulsi tea at my side, book in hand.  i slipped easily into sleep and dreamed of bombs almost going off, a quiet revolution under the surface of a country.  i woke up bleeding.

part two:

autumn equinox rolls the sun from virgo to libra, so perhaps it's no surprise that the combination of feeling sick, seeking warmth, and wanting to share food all rolled into a deep longing.  a desire for relationship, but more specifically, a romance, a partner. 

i walk often around town with my headphones, daydreaming about to-do lists and creative projects, moving my head to beats, letting my heart swell to melodies.  often i muse about romantic longings, and, like sandpaper, they rub up against the very real busy-ness that is my daily life.  for many many months, i have asked myself if i have it in me to give what i seek, to offer what i need/want/wish for.  the answer is often a painful no.  i don't create the necessary space in my life for this.

almost every day, my calendar is filled from the moment i awaken until i go to bed at night.  i hardly get enough sleep, believing i can catch up next season.  in the last year, i have started to prioritize the solitude i need.  it took me a long time to realize how many hours i must set aside for myself, simply to think/write/meditate.... a lot.  each morning, i prefer to wake up and write for over an hour, and i usually need another hour each day just to think.  this is best done sitting in my room or by the water & meditating, or going for a walk with my headphones.

the life list starts rolling in.... there are at least 25 big writing projects that i've half-started, not to mention the constant ongoing music-mix-making and friend packages i'm forever trying to mail.  then there are all my favorite confidantes that i crave time with, whether in person (in madison) or via phone.  there is music to be created, bands to start, guitars & drums & pianos to play.  there are sobrinos that grow so rapidly i get time-whiplash whenever we hang out.  there are lots of smart amazing talented people i want to get to know better, so many powerful speakers and workshops to attend (for free!) at the university, endless music shows and dance performances and fundraisers around town, birthdays to celebrate, you name it.

all this must come in between and around the three other major time-consuming parts of my life: my paid job (32 hours each week), my role as cooperative-owner of bare bones farm (12-24 hours each week), and my commitment as part of the groundwork collective (varies). 

the other day, i asked myself if i fill my life the way i do because i don't have the romantic relationship(s) i desire.  then i realized how this has actually been a habit of mine for a long time: constant productivity, busy patterns, so many things to juggle.  the difficult truth is that this was the gift and the curse that i brought into my last longterm relationship.  as a gift, i was often processing so many different experiences, learning and growing rapidly, seeking and stretching and taking on more and more.  like this quote i read last night: "'i change too quickly: my today refutes my yesterday.  when i ascend i often jump over steps, and no step forgives me that.  when i am aloft, i always find myself alone.  no one speaks to me, the frost of solitude makes me tremble.  what do i want in the heights?'" (from thus spake zarathustra)  my own self-determination is a gift that allows me to look inside as well as in multiple directions for the connection and validation i seek, not simply to impose this as pressure on one single person/partner.  i know that this is a strength i bring, and something i look for in others as well.

but i have also become highly aware of what a curse these workaholic, intensely productive patterns are.  the questions i wrestle with now are things like- have i internalized capitalism so intricately that i cannot separate my being from my doing?  am i hypervigilant with momentum to avoid the crash of inertia?  why does slowing down often lead me into depression?  at what point does my individual sense of stress leak into the lives of the people who care about me?  how does my pace and drive to process things quickly (and change rapidly) put pressure on others?  how does my workaholism leave no room for the spontaneous? have i become too serious?  too isolated?  do i allow things the time to unfold at their own pace, or am i constantly pushing?  how can i transform my tremendous guilt when friends and family want more of my time than i have to offer?

so i get it now.  i have a lot going on in my mind most of the time.  i hold myself to particular standards, i don't like my time to be wasted, and i create a life where i am always learning something new.  i am an intense creature.  this often bothers other people, as intensity is a quality that others are either drawn to or repelled by.  i believe my drive to constantly move, produce, and explore comes from a deep passion and creativity, a longing to be fully living my life.  the irony is that it often keeps me from being fully awake and alive in the moment.  i am forever reflecting on the past or chasing something into the future, seeking depth and expansion elsewhere.

so on the autumn equinox, it all lies bare.  a day of slowness & spaciousness stirs up the fierce longing in me, for sweetness, tenderness, companionship, silliness, care, compassion, connection.  when all is pulled away, the simple days of warmth, food, books, and blankets are ones i want more of.  true nourishment. 

i send this wish now into the magic of the equinox: help me make more space in my life like this.  then tell romance to come over, like lightning.

"'this tree stands here alone on the mountainside; it has grown up high above man and animal. and if it wished to speak, it would find no one who understood it: so high has it grown.  now it waits and waits - yet what is it waiting for?  it lives too near the seat of the clouds: is it waiting, perhaps, for the first lightning?'" (nietzsche)

a gift

The Uses of Sorrow
by Mary Oliver

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)

Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.

It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift.

when i wrap myself in contradictions

when i wrap myself in contradictions

it was brilliant. the line

ran into the cavity

before sleep, sorta perfect

and fleeting

yet look! the words tumble

and spit out ALL

CAPS without knowing

how these little things piss

in the breeze and blow

back

words will wrap me in thin

paper, bones of another season

that rattled warmly, a fan

blowing the sticky air

outwards, hot thunder

on a drifting day

i burned my tongue

imagining winter, a casual frost

bitten onto delicate parts,

these are the senses.

today i realized i am in love

with this unfamiliar world.

i open my mouth, everything is

wide wide awake, soaking

and steeping. a car horn

shakes inside me, i peak

and shudder.

why is the relentless brain

chasing dyads into dust?

with two hands i lock myself

behind the door, the pores

close on themselves with bandhas

and mudras. soaring and seeking,

the breath breaks its own

bread, it's own body.

there is yes

9.21.12

second to most

hand games by marge piercy

Intent gets blocked by noise.
How often what we spoke
in the bathtub, weeping
water to water, what we framed
lying flat in bed to the spiked
night is not the letter that arrives,
the letter we thought we sent. We drive
toward each other on expressways
without exit. The telephone
turns our voices into codes,
then decodes the words falsely,
terms of an equation
that never balances, a scale
forever awry with its foot
stuck up lamely like a scream.

Drinking red wine from a sieve,
trying to catch love in words,
its strong brown river in flood
pours through our weak bones.
A kitten will chase the beam of a flash
light over the floor. We learn
some precious and powerful forces
can not be touched, and what
we touch plump and sweet
as a peach from the tree, a tomato
from the vine, sheds the name
as if we tried to write in pencil
on its warm and fragrant skin.

Mostly the television is on
and the washer is running and the kettle
shrieks it's boiling while the telephone
rings. Mostly we are worrying about
the fuel bill and how to pay the taxes
and whether the diet is working
when the moment of vulnerability
lights on the nose like a blue moth
and flitters away through clouds of mosquitoes
and the humid night. In the leaking
sieve of our bodies we carry
the blood of love.

goes my heart

what the point

When Saul Williams was asked what the point of poetry was, he said: "I'm making this up, I have no idea but here we go. I think that it would be to express, to share, to relieve, to explore" and that "for me, poetry offers some what of a cathartic experience. I am able to move through emotions and emotional experience particularly, you know, break-ups, difficulties in all the things that I may face, whether that is with an industry or a loved one or whomever, there needs to be an infiltration process, like you have a window open over there. That is the purpose of poetry: it is the window that opens, that allows some air in, some other insight, some other possibility so we can explore all that we feel, all that we think but with the space to see more than what we know, because there is so much more than we know". He also said "if I didn't open myself to the possibilities of the unknown, then I would be lost".

cross my path

cross my path

look you're younger and self

protective self

aware i see it

running into my mind again

but it passes

through a window on a bus

somewhat searching and maybe shy

or maybe she

confused things

and that's the new look

apparently

breakup came into fashion

i knew those designs

my eyeglasses blocked out the faces

the public crying continued for months

but listen, these verbs have tensed into past

muscles clenched then finally

relaxed, sitting calm

in the lower abdomen, the lower spine

all unattached & gratefully deep

i fumble

this is the real deal the ready vein tapped and sturdy

an open palm an open tree

crosshairs, my heart

wish to know you slowly through

songs or silences but

it's true, i'm enamored

with my strange powerful sensual self

we have no arrangements

that we know of

12.26.11

song by adrienne rich

You're wondering if I'm lonely:
OK then, yes, I'm lonely
as a plane rides lonely and level
on its radio beam, aiming
across the Rockies
for the blue-strung aisles
of an airfield on the ocean.

You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely

If I'm lonely
it must be the loneliness
of waking first, of breathing
dawn's first cold breath on the city
of being the one awake
in a house wrapped in sleep

If I'm lonely
it's with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it's neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning.

i hear you

i hear you

she loves to share 

words but hates that refrain
tossed on the counter like loose change

from a pocket of inattentive speech

what this silly language

can manhandle who could

handle a womyn we trans

fer the manipulative

and become

haunting come

back not coercive but

confused, a book

of cursive letters reshuffled

hands fidget beads counted

something roars

like sugar & that

which no one holds

accountable no one

holds hands but such

things change terms

like partners or lovers

the one who risks the rewind

reminds the listener self

checks the interview clothes for wrinkles

combs hair with fingers

washes the rag from the blood

someone cries and pulls

at magnetic fate

someone brings someone else

all the way back

to original

kindness

2007

birthday!