Birds
telescopic texts (avec "?") (5/x)
can we remember together, after all
or does my voice harden the picture frame?
by being body, do i gather you
intolerably, or spread you thin as kin,
one stroking throb of summer esoteric —
you tickle me with feather of a peacock.
a gazer’s gloomy imagery is perfume
of incense, arousal at great distances,
long-smouldering and lit by tender match.
far from the proximity of virgins
there burn the verbs of love, arrayed
as galaxy of irretrievability —
before my eyes, you took and held my hand.
//
wa’alaikumsalam + selamat purnama 🌕
Aphrodite's verb for a meme-lord
don’t be gender-strung
brother, grinding in a corner
sexless repetitions.
go limp a little.
let be won a little.
let the sun a little soften
your margarine edges.
the men i know
resemble a differently-
tipped tree than you.
my men are fundamentals, lost
in parched landscapes, empty
of water, warmth, and mercy,
from where, i teach them love.
lusty giants bristle-trunked
and planet-stranded, are nipple-
slit and magma-branded
by fully-armored Mars.
but cold palms trembling
twiddle the ephemeral course
with your recurrent inkling.
you, pocketed by four-
fingered mercenaries, twenty-
four, seven, re-puppet the gifted goose.
smoke the flat potion.
blowhard the hollow motion.
worship the literal juice.
shout, as if spilled clout
were potency, your wee-
throated catharsis.
strong-arm, for and from
the haptic trill,
a lover’s pity.
you, lordly and viral, left your
deflated blubber on
the public bedside table,
honey— your woodless worms
exhausted into empty domain
of static, remorseless maw.
and tender pussycat,
she swat. then low-key, she
your factum, deposited
into her rainy-day, furry-frosted
milkmaid, snappy the snatch-
game crocodile account.
//
lapsed momentarian
seed fluff billows
across the black mat
(inhale
jump back
chaturanga)
so much
for so little
for so much
immaterial
globe, a memory
of lost focus
dream
of a body, as wind
seeking structure
the velvet blue
of a butterfly wing
i don’t know why
things are shaped
the way they are
sent
published, and yet
anecdotal
birds who can’t fly
insects without words
studying
to be a container
for the already
understanding
it is needful
to be broken
//
telescopic texts (avec “mon oncle”) (2/x)
well, i make believe an uncle, dead
and dear. less clear is fortune of the bird.
to fly, to seek, and what on earth to find
but torrent of an obsolescent mind,
(he said), obscure and arduous to hear.
and yet, it flies. and though he doubts her crown
and midnight sight, she will fly too. and though
her silver glows in anecdotal mood,
her lilt, of stellar tilt, still loving, lingers
in braided dancing round a pool of blue,
tuning her clutch in nesting eddy of
red bird, whose course is old and hardly true,
and yet, he lives. rising, as golden-red
in flight, crowing like Scorpio in the east.
rest easy, uncle cold and fluttering
and lately of rambunctious residue.
a dove survives heaven to choir anew.
//
snow white turning
has the twinkle ever
been for nothing
more than
to leave
a loving
artifact
to make
a deathless
hen,
whose faith outpaced
her season’s augury
this fruit is sticky
stretchy,
furious
its nectar possessed
of Lethean ambience
my arms are glittering
swans, my pillows
pur de lait, my eyes
are royal-blooded
blue navé, my dreams
are dialogues
of dolphins
how can she
believe the verbs
you writ, when all
you tender-left
were winterscape, or
sidereal tongue-
traps, of snowmen
that psychedelic night,
she sapped the wine
and stole the spade
howl-lit, she went
digging
in mud of your
decaying spring
for word-eaten
bodies
to meet
the gristled
marrow
to touch and leave
fingerprints
melting
on tongue
rose red grows
from a hollow bone
while moon-
shot belladonna
is kissing cousins
with bull-horned
hemlock, reckless
and honest
//
still
on the sawah
reeds resonate
as harmonies
inchoate
discord ebbs
and flows like
isothermal shadows
or disagreements
overheard from
a neighbor’s
tv show
the invectives
of detectives
sound like seagulls
hungry, jostling
for scraps
at the surface
of ocean
and
counter-
ocean
as hemispheric
currents under-
go reversals
as whale song
catalyzes
schools of squid
singing,
it does
not end
the answer
is still
( blowing
in the
wind )
//
selamat purnama 🌕
dreamcatching
is your weaving procrastination or
bare art to chart the tempest of my heart
make me be making you become our all
is it wisdom when you step away from wood
the holding firm of it, its firmament
but temperamentally gossips with birds
is it deception that you tangle, home
of spider-silk as wordy work, anchored
by glittering images that come to know me
no pristine landscape catches stellar wings
earth shakes the boughs of quaking sun
scattering us as gibbering bats from ashes
airborne we’re hunting fireflies between
a melting Luna’s effulgent ice cream
dodging light-threaded night and Venus rising
i am assemblage channeled to be none
you are motion, savior of fitful sleep
the rhythmic tide unravelling its mooring
draw deeply down where one is one is one
fly home again wherefrom wind-woven sea
embroiders iridescent migrations
//
Wasalamu’alaikum 🌖✨
Æ.4 (Hekate and the swan)
æ wrote you a poem
asked you your thoughts
you said
irrelevant
if you’ve not yet
remembered pain
how do you love
premise
unprovable (and
faceless
you speculate
æ was a silver
swan before
you met her
you are Pan
become his own
textile aping
of Venus)
æ am
my face is
your forever
(un-hackable)
crossroads
//
(insp. by reddit via Ran Prieur)
assalamualaikum warahmatullahi wabarakatu 🌘
Condolences 🕊️
Grace and chicks.
Sky from home (6).
Sky from home (2).
To understand the meaning of rain here, it’s useful to know that we live half outside. This is typical in Balinese villages. When it rains, that means staying dry in the bedroom or going outside to living areas and getting a little wet. The kitchen and bale (our little “living room”) are covered, but walkways get slippery, stray drops are always blowing in, the more wind and rain, the less dry, the less safe for cats and electronic devices. Huddling in from the edges. It can be… inconvenient, but I mostly like living close to the weather. And the garden, and the bugs, snails, bats, frogs, geckos and tokays, occasional birds, snakes, monitor lizards, stranger cats, etc., that visit.
That little bale is also the place where we socialize at home, and it’s visited daily by members of our Balinese family. Writing and my yoga practice demand a sustained level of privacy that’s not typical of family life here. (And not good at all for social anxiety.) I’d always heard that “Asian culture” was “more family-centered, less individualistic” than Western, but I never understood it until I lived (sort of) immersed in it. (I say sort of, because we don’t live at the main family compound, but at a nearby offshoot. Even so,) it seems to me like a drastically different lifestyle that has profound effects on mental, emotional, social, psycho-spiritual development. Not least because families take care of their elderly. I think treatment of elders sets a strong foundation for how people think and feel about death and dying, what comes to be and passes away, and what, if anything, is deathless.