2011/11/18

The Raggled Matrix of an Hour's Peace Cannot Reform Crude Factions of a State Never Alone Except Among the Mad




I overheard two cops talking, one saying, I don't understand, why don't they sit down and negotiate, to which I said, I said at Thursday Night Pints, but aren't you here to make us sit down and shut up if ordered to by the same people you'd ask us to negotiate with? L said, you weren't clubbed? Occupy wasn't interested in fucking with the police - the police had no interest in fucking with Occupy, I said. I saw some video, D said, they weren't in riot gear. It was totally non-confrontational, I said. One of the speakers said, I said, Now, we're going to turn around and leave peacefully because they (meaning the cops) don't think we can. Of course they think they could, I continued, they had already started dismissing half their presence while the event was still going on. See any Hilltop people, K asked. Two profs, one who you'd guess from your department, another from Spanish and Portuguese, I said, three students in Hilltop gear, rich white boys, standing off to the side mocking, videoing, the fuckers. Silence. Did you see the article in the student newspaper, asked D. Yes, we mumbled. We'd already had our two rounds. Guess I won't have any trouble getting across the bridge, said L, and we left and she probably didn't.










CHRIST AMONG THE MONEYCHANGERS, 1929

William Logan

Among shivering bankers the coin went false,
and on damp walls the shreds of tapestry
repented the cost of flowers under glass,
the foul pool swollen with fish, small vanities
whose scales were weighed out coolly in silk thread.
The stink of plaster corrupts the polychrome
and carp convert in secret to the cause
of wall-eyed ancestors flaking under crests
now mangy lions rise rampant to protect,
their hair shirts still acrawl with louse and worm.
The raggled matrix of an hour’s peace
cannot reform crude factions of a state
never alone except among the mad,
who on their knees vomited up pale blood
that splashed like taxes on the flagstones.
Sumptuous deaths in the shade of politics,
and then the posthumous careers, the charter bus,
the cure of hunting hawks and not their masters.



2011/11/17

Seven Photos





















Breaking up peacefully as I was leaving. More tomorrow, or not.

Here Are the Stones Loosed from Their Settings Here Is the Bridge Over the Water




WTOP is breathlessly reporting that OMFG! your commute home this afternoon might be nightmarish as Occupy DC and Occupy NOVA converge on Key Bridge, a bridge that occupies itself already on a nightly basis. I approve of the symbolism: it will piss off the assholes at YFWP who have declared war on Occupy. If I can't walk down to Key Bridge today at lunch, today after work, where the fuck else can I walk a quarter-mile to occupy? I'll be in a black United knit hat taking photos with a blue camera, say hi. Photos later today, maybe, tomorrow, sure.














HUM

Ann Lauterbach

The days are beautiful
The days are beautiful.

I know what days are.
The other is weather.

I know what weather is.
The days are beautiful.

Things are incidental.
Someone is weeping.

I weep for the incidental.
The days are beautiful.

Where is tomorrow?
Everyone will weep.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
The days are beautiful.

Tomorrow was yesterday.
Today is weather.

The sound of the weather
Is everyone weeping.

Everyone is incidental.
Everyone weeps.

The tears of today
Will put out tomorrow.

The rain is ashes.
The days are beautiful.

The rain falls down.
The sound is falling.

The sky is a cloud.
The days are beautiful.

The sky is dust.
The weather is yesterday.

The weather is yesterday.
The sound is weeping.

What is this dust?
The weather is nothing.

The days are beautiful.
The towers are yesterday.

The towers are incidental.
What are these ashes?

Here is the hate
That does not travel.

Here is the robe
That smells of the night

Here are the words
Retired to their books

Here are the stones
Loosed from their settings

Here is the bridge
Over the water

Here is the place
Where the sun came up

Here is a season
Dry in the fireplace.

Here are the ashes.
The days are beautiful.


2011/11/16

Postscript to the Previous





Seattle. Regarding Paternoccupy (I crib my own comment): Corporate had been war-gaming how and when best to punch the fucking hippies - they were hoping for an early bitter winter so that Occupy would disperse itself (and they could call Occupy pussies) - but hey, they really wanted to punch the fucking hippies, so why not last weekend when everyone (and by everyone, I mean the media) was distracted by the sensational and epic fall of a Conservative icon? Probably not the primary calculation, but I bet it was a calculation. As for Corporate's private military, click photo for better look at the smirks on these fuckers' faces:





Meanwhile, yay Baltimore! occupiers, who are, get this, called arrogant by the fucker Karl Rove. R, were you and/or A there?

UPDATE! More, plus three more vids of the below!



Paternoccupy, or: Do You Wish to Forget the Manuscript or Do You Wish to Evict the Manuscript?

Indulge me, doesn't it seem a smidgeon convenient that the Penn State sex scandal, which we will eventually learn was known much longer and deeper ago by too many people for the story to have just busted public now, broke three days before a coordinated police assault on Occupy in which all efforts were made to limit press access because the police were giddy to bust heads at the slightest resistance, often offered by the cop as proxy for gratis to the bludgeonee?





No, I don't think Bloomberg and his Corporate cohorts coordinated smashing the plague-carrying fleas of Occupy with the deliberate sacrificing of a helmetball god (and his loyal to Corporate fiefdom) with the biggest, ugliest, most sure to rattle America's culture wars most sure-to-inflame fault lines, not that I don't think they would if they could in a blink to save a penny. I do think they leaped at the obvious cover the scandal gave them, they leaped at the chance that the morality play in the media was the anal rape in the shower of ten year old boys by a trusted helmetball coach rather than beating the fuck out of hippies challenging a system that rewards its top executives for performance by allowing them to anally rape ten year old boys with Corporate's full knowledge and consent until caught, on purpose or otherwise.










LESS MUSIC

Marjorie Welish

This freedom up.
A house difficult of exit, diffident of exit.

This flame up.
The false house, house of faulty entries.

This facade up.
The manifold worries architecture.

This face up.
To the artiface's winding paths we lend our gloss.

This fact up!
This house multicursal and continuous.
Do you desire to disengage the frontispiece of devastating complexity?

This!
The curving house is green.
Do you wish to disappear from an escaping sentence?

Do you wish to forget the manuscript or do you wish to evict the manuscript?
This froth up.
The house ancient of exit, of antecedent impressions
.


2011/11/15

Catch Souls of Trash Packing Kids






For Authorities Whose Hopes Are Shaped by Mercenaries? Writers Entrapped by Teatime Fame and by Commuter's Comforts? Not for These the Paper Nautilus Constructs Her Thin Glass Shell




Two years ago I would have calculated all the implications I could of the below, good and bad - and I think good here is attempted, all hypocrisy and complicity implicit by all assumed - and then anguished over each one, but fuck it.






My black and white with red crest Swiss Army watch is suddenly losing minutes but only minutes between minute hand ten and twelve the past eight hours. If I reset the minute hand to one it keeps time until ten then loses three minutes between ten and eleven and two minutes between eleven and twelve. This can't be the battery, right?
















THE PAPER NAUTILUS

Marianne Moore

For authorities whose hopes
are shaped by mercenaries?
Writers entrapped by
teatime fame and by
commuters' comforts? Not for these
the paper nautilus
constructs her thin glass shell.

Giving her perishable
souvenir of hope, a dull
white outside and smooth-
edged inner surface
glossy as the sea, the watchful
maker of it guards it
day and night; she scarcely

eats until the eggs are hatched.
Buried eight-fold in her eight
arms, for she is in
a sense a devil-
fish, her glass ram'shorn-cradled freight
is hid but is not crushed;
as Hercules, bitten

by a crab loyal to the hydra,
was hindered to succeed,
the intensively
watched eggs coming from
the shell free it when they are freed,--
leaving its wasp-nest flaws
of white on white, and close-

laid Ionic chiton-folds
like the lines in the mane of
a Parthenon horse,
round which the arms had
wound themselves as if they knew love
is the only fortress
strong enough to trust to.


2011/11/14

50 Words for.....



I forget what had me so pissed off at NPR a couple of weeks ago, but in the spirit of my post-after-post routine of proving my hypocrisy and complicity, here's a link to the complete stream of Kate Bush's new album, 50 Words for Snow.

Only three listens so far, a quiet wow, though I'm hopelessly, happily biased by love.

The Minor Adjustments in Our Equations Still Indicate the Universe Is Insane

I still can't read novels. I haven't finished anything I'd started before I last bitched about not reading, I've started other books (yes, yours) that I can't finish either. I am listening to music better than I ever have in my life, and while there's obvious truth that I'm trying to impress you (if you have a blog you know what I mean) with late and contemporary whatever you want to call it music, I cannot get enough of it.





Yay me! Since I can't read and I think I'm thinking like the above, it must mean something. Also, there are two things I want to write about here but can only write about there. You only think I bleggalgaze here. Also, thanks to N from Bethesda for the blankets. I was talking Saturday with Charlie at Freedom Plaza, they could use coffee, big canisters of Folgers not whole bean from Starbucks, paper plates and cups and plastic cutlery, I'll be taking some down this coming Sunday (before picking up Planet at BWI, yay me!), if you want to help, let me know.










HANDY GUIDE

Dean Young

Avoid adjectives of scale.
Dandelion broth instead of duck soup.
Don’t even think you’ve seen a meadow, ever.
The minor adjustments in our equations
still indicate the universe is insane,
when it laughs a silk dress comes out its mouth
but we never put it on. Put it on.
Cry often and while asleep.
If it’s raw, forge it in fire.
That’s not a mountain, that’s crumble.
If it’s fire, swallow.
The heart of a scarecrow isn’t geometrical.
That’s not a diamond, it’s salt.
That’s not the sky but it’s not your fault.
My dragon may be your neurotoxin.
Your electrocardiogram may be my fortune cookie.
Once an angel has made an annunciation,
it’s impossible to tell him he has the wrong address.
Moonlight has its own befuddlements.
The rest of us can wear the wolf mask if we want
or look like reflections wandered off.
Eventually armor, eventually sunk.
You wanted love and expected what?
A parachute? Morphine? A gold sticker star?
The moment you were born—
you have to trust others because you weren’t there.
Ditto death.
The strongest gift I was ever given
was made of twigs.
It didn’t matter which way it broke.


2011/11/13

Holyfuck







Holyfuck. I hadn't thought of Sofia Gubaidulina in a couple of years until I saw Alex Ross' blogpost yesterday. Went and searched WFMU and here, an entire Bryce show of Gubaidulina from 2010. Holyfuck. That's all I got, don't care if it's not enough.

UPDATE!

OK, you can have more. Glorious Percussion, plus:


2011/11/12

Under the Dry Pandanus, to the Scratching of Kangaroo Rats, I Achieve Psychic Onanism

When Paterno went rogue, announced his own retirement schedule, that's when Penn States's regents wanted to fire his ass beyond knowing they had to fire his ass, said L at Thursday Night Pints. I don't get the student rioting, said D. I said, you don't? K said, my sister's husband's bestfriend's brother's kid was in the crowd, it was mostly drunken frat boys, it was College Park after a Duke game, a chance for violence for the colors. When Paterno went rogue? I said. He didn't go rogue, the throne dropped out beneath him. He acted no different in announcing his own retirement schedule than he had for forty years. But I don't get why student's rioted, said D. You don't? said K. It was appropriate and acceptable tribal behavior, I said. L said, it wasn't only appropriate, it was required, a loyalty test. Loyalty? said D. To what? Exactly, said K, and made D go buy a round.












I AM AN ATHEIST WHO SAYS HIS PRAYERS

Karl Shapiro


I am an atheist who says his prayers.

I am an anarchist, and a full professor at that. I take the loyalty oath.

I am a deviate. I fondle and contribute, backscuttle and brown, father of three.

I stand high in the community. My name is in Who’s Who. People argue about my modesty.

I drink my share and yours and never have enough. I free-load officially and unofficially.

A physical coward, I take on all intellectuals, established poets, popes, rabbis, chiefs of staff.

I am a mystic. I will take an oath that I have seen the Virgin. Under the dry pandanus, to the scratching of kangaroo rats, I achieve psychic onanism. My tree of nerves electrocutes itself.

I uphold the image of America and force my luck. I write my own ticket to oblivion.

I am of the race wrecked by success. The audience brings me news of my death. I write out of boredom, despise solemnity. The wrong reason is good enough for me.

I am of the race of the prematurely desperate. In poverty of comfort I lay gunpowder plots. I lapse my insurance.

I am the Babbitt metal of the future. I never read more than half of a book. But that half I read forever.

I love the palimpsest, statues without heads, fertility dolls of the continent of Mu. I dream prehistory, the invention of dye. The palms of the dancers’ hands are vermillion. Their heads oscillate like the cobra. High-caste woman smelling of earth and silk, you can dry my feet with your hair.

I take my place beside the Philistine and unfold my napkin. This afternoon I defend the Marines. I goggle at long cars.

Without compassion I attack the insane. Give them the horsewhip!

The homosexual lectures me brilliantly in the beer booth. I can feel my muscles soften. He smiles at my terror.

Pitchpots flicker in the lemon groves. I gaze down on the plains of Hollywood. My fine tan and my arrogance, my gray hair and my sneakers, O Israel!

Wherever I am I become. The power of entry is with me. In the doctor’s office a patient, calm and humiliated. In the foreign movies a native, shabby enough. In the art gallery a person of authority (there’s a secret way of approaching a picture. Others move off). The high official insults me to my face. I say nothing and accept the job. He offers me whiskey.

How beautifully I fake! I convince myself with men’s room jokes and epigrams. I paint myself into a corner and escape on pulleys of the unknown. Whatever I think at the moment is true. Turn me around in my tracks; I will take your side.

For the rest, I improvise and am not spiteful and water the plants on the cocktail table.


Sixty-Six Today







2011/11/11

Fifty-Eight Today




Happy Birthday Andy Partridge. XTC (and side-projects) are in the innermost circle of acts for one of the three rotating spots in my sillyass Desert Island Five game.

































The Soul's a Petrified Fleck of Partridge

Fuckity, I'm sorry, watch this:





Jeebusfuck. Gabriel's 1982 Security tour, Warner Theater, literally, one of the best five nights of my life, but fuckity, my entire life has been a lie.

Fuckity, Obama's decided to not piss you off until after next year's election:

The Obama administration will reassess the proposed route through Nebraska for a major pipeline that would carry oil from Canada to Texas, according to State Department officials, a move that will delay a final decision beyond the 2012 election.

Fucker. Again, please please please please please please please please please please please please please may John Roberts get hit by a bus in March so Obama need name Roberts' replacement at the height of the election cycle. Please please please please please please please please please please please please please.

Fuckity, did you know Washington DC has a professional soccer team?




Fuckity, it's true, but not for fucking long:

We have to aggressively figure a solution out, and that solution needs to be figured out soon. I am concerned about where this team will be in 2012. They’ve been operating without a new lease. They’ve been in discussions on a lease to try to improve their terms. I’m shocked to say they could be paying more for their lease in RFK than any other team we have in the league. There is no doubt in my mind that it’s a stadium that is substandard to what soccer fans are able to experience in many other markets.

I don’t know where Kevin Payne is in his most recent conversations with the mayor. All I know is that Part One of this project is not asking the mayor to give us money to build a stadium in D.C.; the first part is to try to renew a lease at RFK that makes economic sense for a soccer team that is delivering great value and employing lots and lots of people and has been a good member of the community.

This occurred to me, it's far-fetched but give it a try: best case scenario is the DC government is corrupt and incompetent (your test for today: is corruption more a feature of incompetence or incompetence a feature of corruption), probable scenario is DC government is corrupt and incompetent but Vince Gray is right that politically there's no fucking way DC spends a cent on United, worse case scenario is the DC government is corrupt but not so incompetent it doesn't want United to fuck off elsewhere so RFK can be torn down so a motherfucking midget with a helmetball team can overspend for the property.

Adding, Kevin Payne. Why is Will Chang paying Kevin Payne, who has failed on the field and has failed in getting a stadium, who appears to have ZERO FUCKING OPTIONS other than move the team from DC? He was hired to produce winning teams and get a stadium built in DC or immediate surrounds. Yes, negotiating with the District sucks. Maybe negotiating with Kevin Payne sucks too.

Also, too. Also, beerless Byrd Stadium and Barra Brava and campus police who couldn't even get a job with the motherfucking Park Police. Win.













THE SOUL

Ira Sadoff

The shaft of narrative peers down.
The soul's a petrified fleck of partridge this October.
Mud-spattered, it thinks it's brush, it thinks
it's one with the brush when God aims

just below its feathers. It's too late to raise the soul,
some ossified conceit we use to talk about deer
as if we were deer, to talk about the sun, as if the cold
autumn light mirrored our lover asleep in the tub.

Nevertheless, I want to talk about it. Those scarred bodies
on the hospital table, they're white chalk children use
to deface the sidewalk. The deer fed in the gazebo,
where the salt lick was barely safe from the fox.

And when the wind didn't drag my scent to her,
I sat listless, half-awake, and watched her hunger
surpass her timidity. I should have been changed.
I should have been startled into submission

by a very white light, I should have shed my misgivings
as her tongue made that sticky sound on the lick
and two startled animals stared into what St. Francis
called a mystery. I should bring her back, the woman too,

the woman who what why words fail me here.
I should sanctify the hospital gown as it slides down
the tunnel of the catscan, to see where
the nodules have spread into the thin, pliable tissues

we call the innards in animals, because they dwell
in scenery, they're setting for the poem, they provide
a respite from the subject who's been probed and lacerated,
who's been skinned and eaten away by the story

when I'm beguiled by the music the hooves made
on the pine floor. I can bring her back, can't I,
I'm bringing him back, the hero who was close enough
so I could watch what was inside his face hover and scatter
.


2011/11/10

Like a Sunbather, Whose Lids Retain a Greenish, Gemmed Impression of the Sun







As promised, Anthony Hecht's Green: An Epistle (with bonus poem). As always, click for better image, as always, read out loud if possible.

As for green, five to one Dark Green beat Noxzema-Bottle Blue (and the votes for Noxzema-Bottle Blue were mostly me on different PCs I walked by in the building I work in), so for the immediate future:





While playing that LOUD! take a guess who turns 58 tomorrow and what band you'll be listening to here. As always, Serendipity fills me with awe.

Also, because I was just thinking about my daughter and because she called while I was and because she'll be home from college in two weeks for Thanksgiving:


An Ark Sets Forth Which Is Itself the Mind Bound for Some Pungent Green











SESTINA d'INVERNO

Anthony Hecht
Here in this bleak city of Rochester,
Where there are twenty-seven words for “snow,”
Not all of them polite, the wayward mind
Basks in some Yucatan of its own making,
Some coppery, sleek lagoon, or cinnamon island
Alive with lemon tints and burnished natives,

And O that we were there. But here the natives
Of this grey, sunless city of Rochester
Have sown whole mines of salt about their land
(Bare ruined Carthage that it is) while snow
Comes down as if The Flood were in the making.
Yet on that ocean Marvell called the mind

An ark sets forth which is itself the mind,
Bound for some pungent green, some shore whose natives
Blend coriander, cayenne, mint in making
Roasts that would gladden the Earl of Rochester
With sinfulness, and melt a polar snow.
It might be well to remember that an island

Was blessed heaven once, more than an island,
The grand, utopian dream of a noble mind.
In that kind climate the mere thought of snow
Was but a wedding cake; the youthful natives,
Unable to conceive of Rochester,
Made love, and were acrobatic in the making.

Dream as we may, there is far more to making
Do than some wistful reverie of an island,
Especially now when hope lies with the Rochester
Gas and Electric Co., which doesn’t mind
Such profitable weather, while the natives
Sink, like Pompeians, under a world of snow.

The one thing indisputable here is snow,
The single verity of heaven’s making,
Deeply indifferent to the dreams of the natives,
And the torn hoarding-posters of some island.
Under our igloo skies the frozen mind
Holds to one truth: it is grey, and called Rochester.

No island fantasy survives Rochester,
Where to the natives destiny is snow
That is neither to our mind nor of our making.




2011/11/09

Shelby Refuses to Choose between Blue and Green on Principle



Press release:
In response to Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s insistence that Occupy Denver choose leadership to deal with City and State officials, and drawing inspiration from the notion that corporations are people, Occupy Denver’s General Assembly has elected a leader: Shelby, a three year old Border Collie. “Shelby is closer to a person than any corporation: She can bleed, she can breed, and she can show emotion. Either Shelby is a person, or corporations aren’t people,” said a Shelby supporter at the time of her election.
Occupy Denver reserves the right to alter leadership status, but for now, Shelby exhibits heart, warmth, and an appreciation for the group over personal ambition that Occupy Denver members feel are sorely lacking in the leaders some of them have voted for on national, state, and local levels. Accordingly, Occupy Denver looks forward to communication with Mayor Hancock and Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper sometime this week to introduce their leadership.
Newly-elected leader Shelby will be leading this Saturday’s Occupy Denver march against Corporate Personhood, and invites all other civic minded dogs (and their leash-holders) to join.

I overheard two Chicago School-trained econ profs in a queue in front of me in the Union two hours ago bitching furiously and sneeringly about Occupy in general and Occupiers voting for the, ahem, bitch in particular, and fuck their dark hearts, it's completely incomprehensible to them, Occupy simply doesn't compute in their Corporate training for one-way, zero-sum negotiation.

Also four people say they like the green, two say the blue, another says to stop wanking (and I anticipate more), so here, a tried and proven bleggalgazing gimmick!





Fuck it, I'll keep it for a green for another day and might play with a header image or not, the true point of this post (beyond my assclownish self-absorption) is that Ken put the song below in my head this morning and it's not left yet and it needs to be in yours too. You're welcome.


GKRIEREKN

Watch the Paterno story the next two weeks - and we're not near full OMFG! yet, this has the potential to be a paradigm-nudging but not paradigm-changing event - as the usual suspects scramble for their usual narratives. Look at me! A pint to the first of you who finds a professional cracker linking Sandusky's behavior to public-urinating Occupiers.

Here's the deal: someone who serviced power's interest profitably and had power's blind eye when surfing power's sewage is to be humiliated and capped as aberration now that he's caught. This particular instance is complicated by helmetball, which is the most apt metaphor for late capitalism America. The World's Second Shittiest Human is outraged as she'd never be at droning Pakistani children or the deliberate impoverishment for profit of US citizens by Vikram Pandit.

Busy, no time to read last night, so this is it. Regular programming resumes tomorrow, or not. The green and the Kirk are gone with next post (though I like the green, you?). Let it not be said I don't honor my bets.

2011/11/08

Blowholes in Rictus



Holyfuck, that photo makes me laugh out loud, it's launched me into the best mood I've had in a week. Forgive me my descents into the maudlin like I forgive me my descents into the maudlin, they produce, when molted out of, metaphors to float me for a month, and Lordy, there is no better metaphor in my brain for America in late terminal capitalism than the Washington Redskins, ownership and management.

Plus I'm busy, so one more, then links, poem, music....











BECAUSE OUR WAITERS ARE HOPELESS ROMANTICS

Amy Beeder

              the plates are broken after just one meal:
plates that mimic lily pads or horseshoe crabs,
              swifts’ wings,
golden koi, whirlpools, blowholes in rictus:
              all smashed against the table’s edge—

. . . also our chef eschews pepper & salt
              for violets & vespers
& squid ink & honey from wasps
              rare lichen grown in local snow
authentic silt dark from the Nile or Tigris.

              Surely you know that poultry, if cooked right,
will cure most common psychic ills?
              It’s something to do with the feathers.

                                      ≈

. . . but you’re hungry. Come in. Sit. Taste.
              There’s breast of swan for shame.

Try a quail tart for rage,
              macaw on poached orchids for boredom.

And we serve so many other things.
              There’s really nothing you can’t order:
goat’s feet, orange groves, prophets & smoke
              convent orphans playing violins
flavors of memory, winter & wax, angles of sun, extravagant claims . . .

              Don’t worry, there’s plenty—

it’s a mysterious feast you attend, but it offers
              an affable scent of the cauldron, the light of abundance poured
over every table & marvelous barstool    
Come in—

                                      ≈

Now you’re getting the gist:
              at each table’s head that growing pile of shards
is not waste but homage to the potter.
              The world’s a dish to relish, to finish:

this conch afloat in broth
              a frilly and vertical eye  
though portent & probably tainted, is solace
              like these towers of loquats & glittering scales
or our bright pans’ brash mortal clanging.

              Blink back the sun and look inside.
Our tiny lights don’t at all resemble stars.  
              Come in, come sup. You’ll never feel full.



2011/11/07

Send Me Home Damaged and Wanting





Listened to the below half an hour ago before seeing the above just now. Not claiming serendipity, not claiming synchronicity, not claiming anything but my reflexive habit of association and claiming these are the strangest days of my life, that I need start making more of them or at least stop making less of them....



the dresses of monday through friday swallow the long hips of weekends












FLOATING TREES

C.D. Wright

a bed is left open to a mirror
a mirror gazes long and hard at a bed

light fingers the house with its own acoustics

one of them writes this down
one has paper

bed of swollen creeks and theories and coils
bed of eyes and leaky pens

much of the night the air touches arms
arms extend themselves to air

their torsos turning toward a roll
of sound: thunder

night of coon scat and vandalized headstones
night of deep kisses and catamenia

his face by this light: saurian
hers: ash like the tissue of a hornets’ nest

one scans the aisle of firs
the faint blue line of them
one looks out: sans serif

“Didn’t I hear you tell them you were born
on a train”

what begins with a sough and ends with a groan
groan in which the tongue’s true color is revealed

the comb’s sough and the denim’s undeniable rub
the chair’s stripped back and muddied rung

color of stone soup and garden gloves
color of meal and treacle and sphagnum

hangers clinging to their coat
a soft while bulb to its string

the footprints inside us
iterate the footprints outside

the scratched words return to their sleeves

the dresses of monday through friday
swallow the long hips of weekends

a face is studied like a key
for the mystery of what it once opened

“I didn’t mean to wake you
angel brains”

ink of eyes and veins and phonemes
the ink completes the feeling

a mirror silently facing a door
door with no lock no lock

the room he brings into you
the room befalls you

like the fir trees he trues her
she nears him like the firs

if one vanishes one stays
if one stays the other will or will not vanish

otherwise my beautiful green fly
otherwise not a leaf stirs