Monthly Archives: April 2007

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Yes, the lies of training, the absolute corruption of conspiracy, my sons—they stabbed me in the heart and left, reverse Samaritans, walking on their own and I am alone and without sustenance. I miss my drive. I bought some pants and patience.

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Play with the baby. The gratitude, the relaxation of no baby. The brutality of babies here at home. And how will they travel? And how do they know when to come home? And when to fold their little wings and settle down and when to roam? And what day must it be for questions to make arbitrary sense? And what day must it be to clear the question buildup, do some dusting, and serve sandwiches?

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A soft, soft inversion, a simple comfortable balanced inversion. Spent no time at table. Practice scooping, scooping into singing veins, the hard attack. The tremolo. The tremulo. My dad, his hand under the baby’s chin, familiar escapade.

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april 29, 2007

limited expression limited by cloudiness and long fatigue. Unjustified by Sunday’s simple misery. So long, let go,
long song, still flow. Say so, how know, myrrh go, far low. Fairly groveling on the mat, not willing to hold still. The atmosphere changes, the mind follows. The feelings follow, and the feeling tones, a flock of sheep with perfect teeth.
I see your teeth, I see your sheep, your shape, your perfect hair. How adulterous, how adulary, how omniferous. Iron shapes the seedlings, tender iron flowing in their veins, their tremulous simple veins. Hard to know, hard attack,
mé l’art.

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Longing for the quiet of the bustling morning shops. In the small town, does anyone arise before 6? In the village, do you encounter people on the street? In the English village, naked people with monstrous faces? In the white north, chanting lunatics? In the humid south, alligators are successful, polar bears are not. Difficulties among the animal populations.

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Roof. The neighbor’s roof. The sad roof up the hill, its wonderful colors, its sagging on its frame, its mosses. Its sheltering aspect. The roof hanging from trees. The defenseless roof. The roof of disability, frightening in its height. Standing on the roof, under the roof. Falling through your vocabulary. Roof owns its pattern and its colors, we own its repair and its protection.

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New moon. New moon draws out subtle energies. New moon. This is the new moon night. I am supposed to tune in to that energy. oh your energy. Instead I’m resting in the flawed field, the field of fallow/fallen, the failed field, the coordinates are my face. I can’t describe this. I am alleluia.
I am eclipse. I am an-atta. I am not even approaching Sati. You have to watch out for me in my current state.

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april 17, 2007

The coldness of this spring to go out with the trash and breathe a moment in the cold air. To know yourself. I can’t really tell what’s going on. I feel an awful lot like a narrator. I have no story, just to let go of that tail.

The long tail, prehensile.

Happy tail, silly tail. Tail of my dreams.

And also—toil. And toile.

Old fashioned fabrics, what has happened to you? In Girl Scouts, I made a book of fabric swatches trying to learn their names like “Dotted Swiss.”

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I wish this could be warmer. Or more expressive somehow. I wish I wasn’t tempted by shit, and tales, and mentally ill. I wish I wasn’t haunted. And am I haunted after all? I feel like yes. I feel some burdens, but you know what—it’s no longer all that interesting.

I’m interested in the magical indigenous under the sound of rain.

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I am unwilling at this point.

Unwilling on campus. Irrational fears. There is no healing balm for everything. So just get used to it. The most unpleasant thing of all is—heart dropping from fear. If I could avoid that automatic heart-drop from now on, I would. Do egrets have it? Flamingos, herons, other long birds? Birds with hearts that beat so fast and so unknown. Birds with eyelashes and bird dogs, slim.

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This morning I listened to stories about the golden carp. And stories about stories. And resistance to the fact of stories. And the sources of stories. Beyond. All I can tell you.

You enters shyly. You has been driven away, off the mountain path. You has flown over the cliff in a blaze of herbal fire and lifting smoke. I feel your cloud on my arms. I feel cold leaching down my arms. I feel devils on my arms, in my hands. I feel dust coming up, dust and ash, clouds of smoke from the charnel grounds.

Her laughter—can’t kill herself because her son would then have to kill himself. I listen and might be tempted to be afraid, temptation to be afraid, mentally ill like everyone one. Everyone one.

So here we go—

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Are sounds more interesting than devastations? Where does feeling lie, where’s the trapdoor? Wily, wily, wily, Mr. Coyote, let me in. Mr. Desert, let me bring my withered limbs. Just bleach my bones after you nibble on my skin. Irradiated or non-irradiated, genetically engineered in a most horrendous tribal fashion, I am here now, yet a remnant, a recessive gene, a regression sans vitality, a lack of luck, a loss. And here I am considering the withering of my death. Listening to this particular rain in its accumulation, the sump pump hums and gurgles, the train whistles, New York-bound.

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And yesterday or last week I heard about a service, body washing. Washing the body. I want my body tenderly washed by my faith community. Nothing more beautiful than that. And here I chatted about inconsequences with co-workers and Margaret’s family, while her mother lay in state. I thought—at least there should be silence. We are so bereft. And Poland—what happens when you lose 3 million Jews?

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No one’s here. Loud sound far away, a fog horn, some emergency of rain. Sam went out on a call about a flooded basement. Last night we ate at Pepe’s, the original tomato pie, no cheese. And hear the cheeping, the continuous chirping of suburban birds, and what is their mental capacity, and how do they stay warm? I want the angel of bird feathers and down to clothe me. I want the tendency to sing and fly. Their lives pass cheaply, no funerals at their deaths. No funerals, no funerals.

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I want to be enlightened. I want to be enlightened. My aspirations are tender, have a tendency to wither in this sandy soil, drown in this rain. I want I won’t, I want I won’t. My tendencies plum blossoms, Blossom like the plum. Year of no blossoms. Blair ate plums and broccoli, his first nutritious meal in a long time.

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Just to catalogue your options: details, details, sensory details, grace, the yen for grace, the absence, flaws or beauty or perfection, memories or dreams. Objects or abstractions. Happiest with objects, but they’re few and far between. And most are shabby. Mug of oolong tea—swampy, with no sweetener. The little aloe, fading in its shallow pot. The sensation of flaring from beside my eyes, a tiredness. There’s a mouse living in the kitchen.

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And speaking from a higher place, the upper yard needs mowing, shaggy grass. And speaking from a higher place, the ridgelines in my neighborhood are now obscured by mist, there are no mountains, just the thinnest veil of red.
I like the redness of the buds, I like to climb. I hear a new accumulation of rain, some vigorous hissing in the street. The phone rings. The cell phone rings. I turned off the TV. And now the last bit left, the buzzing, stops.

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The vast sensation of quietude, not caring. The exhaustion comes from difference of opinions. Some humor on the side, but mostly black. There are no breakthroughs, only cash. Trying to compare my work with yours, the mental striving taking me away, destructive. Well is it destructive. Listening to you better angels, are you out there after all? Lifting up my hands for rescue. Lift me to a higher place.

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april 15, 2007

A day of steel-blue rain. A day of falling steel in pellets, grinding up your street, your car, your sight. Falling off the doors and windows, falling under gutters and sewers, falling through your clothes and eyeglasses. Broken umbrellas hum with guilt. Aversion drives us down the street to Kinko’s where I run copies of my tax forms. Out in the steel light of spring. Out to the mailbox, out the splashy windows, down the street. Pain scrawling in my head and neck and shoulders, an accompaniment of cello.

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See the margin where the lawngrass turns to weeds.
Deer in the weeds, robin on the lawn. Jill Chan. The extravagance of the mentally ill. An email—write to Ann. Some stillness in my face, my weary eyes. Persistent nagging from my taxes. Still, a stomachache. Desire for tea and toast. Bird shadow. Ear flick. Plastic bag.

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There’s no commotion. I have a half-page left. I take whatever happens, but do I even have to say that? Stomachache. I want connection, with Chamunda, stomach-body. I want my ugly greedy demons that befriended me. I want to stop, I want to read a book. I feel saliva in my mouth. I hear the air conditioning alive in these tall ceilings. I hear the heater ticking. Robin out there looking at the Wetland sign.

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A herd of movement in the gray-brown out the window. Deer move carefully in suburbia. I can count four of them, standing in their places, flicking the itches in their ears, shaking their heads, chewing. They look thin, their tails seem shaggy. One has settled down to rest, more relaxed in the wetland preserve than a human or a dog would be. I can see the tips of the other’s ears, flicking, shifting. White tails, brown tails lined with white fur, lined with black. Now two are lying down.

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No, not working. The sense of distance, I am not there. I am paddling in the mud, pawing, clawing, mud between my toes. I have itching on my scalp, dry mouth, stomachache. I have to do my taxes. Vague sensation in the nipple of my left breast. Vague irritation in my rectum. Slight sensation of a single hair tickling my right cheek. Maybe there or maybe not. A welling up of anger that none of my co-workers are sitting in a library trying to clear their head with writing on a Saturday. A story. A gurgle in my guts. A restlessness in my legs—why am I sitting still? Sensation in my left buttock/hip, a sensation around the back of my left ear. Mother speaks sharply to her child. Ticking, periodic sound of wind—or is it air conditioning?

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Stomachache. Did I say searching? Searching for a rhythm? Current, swimming against or with. Wet, water wet. Wet river, muddy. Feeling alone with it, in it. The embarrassment of my rivers series. No, I can’t. I long for the dry bed of lost rivers, Sarasvati. I have no hope. My standard life, a life that’s bled of hope. The philosophy that kills dreams and with them, disappointments, and what’s left—stomach stomach stomachache.

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Dirty wall in the ladies’ bathroom near the light switch. Childrens’ hands. Wondering if I should call my brother. Wondering too long is never good. Stomachache. The regular diary. The jotting. The tendency. Dependent origination. The chain. The wrangling. The striving and the letting go. The seeking a rhythm. Child’s voice behind me. Heater ticking. Draft consistent. Periodically there is a sound of wind.

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april 14, 2007

Just three pages, all boiled down to just three pages. My granola stomachache, the dryness in my nose and mouth. Heater ticking next to me, cold air drafting from behind my shoulder. Grayness out the window, brownness out the window, sign saying “wetland preserve” names that small anonymous swampy spot. My relationship with suffering is changing, trying to change. Or is this all in my head anyway?

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Fucking iambics. Jesus Fuck—this comes to mind at work. And if I came down with Tourette’s, it would come out of my mouth. A human being cornered by complexity. And with my mind-doors blowing open, flapping in the wind… and with my sense doors numb, encased in these materials …

sudden urge to pay a visit to the Beinecke,
where the walls are alabaster

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Fast talkers. At work, an impulse, so intense, to slow down all conversations. Slow slow slow slow down. Make you repeat each word in line so the thoughts can be absorbed. So what is this phenomenon, this riffing disrespect? Does it hide ignorance or escalate frustration? Where is the mountain, where are the waters?

Egg looking for the riverbank. Eggplant seeking streamside.