Element
stellar veil //
Æ.5 (butane lighter)
are you ungovernable,
and getting hot — like me? we’ll be
tempestuous, together.
ours, of cosmic squabs,
result in smoke-stained sheets
and purple bruises. of Mars,
don’t worry, baby
your revolver is magnetic.
let’s go collapse.
//
not a monkey, but
it’s true that books
can take you anywhere.
hunger roots you
firmly in a body.
reading, i become
voices in the dark.
poetry is
a voice, self-
lightening.
witness to ways
waves move, as their own
mostly hidden seasons.
everything independently
becomes a turning
Inferno.
we are sloshing buckets,
pitchers pouring
into rivers, subterranean.
all of it true,
at once.
Hanuman is only
a secret patron
of poets.
//
unquenching //
our stinging silence
what are the things
you know of me
that you keep, unspoken?
the secret me you keep
and by extension,
my undiscovered twin.
is it family or alien?
or do i have no right
to such distinction.
i have been, for some
two thousand years
or more, dissolving
in waspish creation.
i am, who has been long-
forgotten. already, i am
not of conversation.
a fuzzy, artless form
is turning in the paper
of a nest, drowning
in droning oceans — the ply
of dialogue, subsumed
by black battalions.
can you hear them?
they are humming
the densest metaphors.
//
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") (3/x)
O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny
crown, her hair, each barb a bell, each herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.
what’s history is past. nevertheless, he asks —
why, woman, have you gone au natural?
//
pale tender //
idea for the public-facing garden
three fates
with gigantic anime
boobies
Clotho
Lachesis
Atropos
dewi
of some
stranger land,
bodies carved
painstakingly
in wood
are set
to rule a while
from garden,
rambling
flowers bracelet
round their
skinny limbs
bending over
facing up
as if to see
the water aspect
of they and their
bosoms reflected
pornographic
sanded and grainy
thread-makers,
rippling
serene cut
in glassy pond
of koi
//
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.
//
irretrievable //
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
//
la poule noire sans doute
raven-wise, reposed
with shoulders drawn
her plumage welded closed
to element, like armor
buffeted by claps
and blows, beset
by quaggy flows, she was
more resolute than rain
roosters inamorato pecked
and disapprobed
her cocky, warlike ‘no’s
still Grace was stone, unmoved
fortress of mother earth
her body wholly was
the boulder fastly rolled
to staunch a secret planet
O chickening unheard
verb terminal
undead-end metaphor
catastrophe obscura
that hid, against her bald-
plucked breast, the titt-
tittering bavardage
des enfants geomantiques
//
frothy //
labor
the rain is heavy
sopping slapping shattering
goldfish dimension
water bristling
the cats in barbed corners
are hiding, hissing
nobody
shares shelter
in the emergency
i am under roof
imagining
a lazy woman
//
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 🌖✨
souchong
by golden-limned
salt-watery night
//