Element

    fast by you

    body of grass
    black earth body
    body of an ask

    three billion years
    four billion blades
    body yet new

    when i lie still
    fast by you
    you find me

    //

    immaculate ooze

    until discomforts of
    deep oceanic trigger
    a sighing spring

    when the abyssal ooze
    in-twined fecundity conceived
    our dark-bodying infant

    (of constant cry)

    //

    🌗

    recollection of an ask

    photo at the beach with pale blue misty light of the shoreline washing onto beige sand with some drifted chunks of coral and shells. a person’s lower legs and feet are visible in the upper right corner of the image and a few footprints faded into wet sand

    on that fateful summer day
    when we escaped the tiring city
    by silly-door in set-down wall
    my love — were we un-born

    //

    in just the time

    i sleep in a living bed
    its not clean but keeps me fed
    its a cradle for my head
    while i wait the one i wed

    i sleep in a shady tree
    i love rumors of the sea
    i refuse the military
    i know you will come for me

    i sleep in the bed you made
    im headstrong but im afraid
    a face could change or be remade
    in just the time i was asleep

    i sleep under miles of ice
    drill the oil melt the dice
    i sleep in a grain of rice
    for my heart you paid a price

    //

    golden ooze

    i did not know until i tasted your honey
    it made me ache to feel everything you did
    it made me stutter to say nothing but grace

    when the belief took me for one moment
    that your spun-gold had been made for me
    it made me forget myself inside myself

    was i the honey in your cell
    your glass jar of honey or a thought
    in the stomach of a honeybee

    the sweet up-welling had dripped everywhere
    i wept to taste it over everything until
    the sky set me down in tethers and drizzles

    //

    miel japonais

    i cannot lie the bit plum
    is perhaps uncomfortable

    yet her blossoms are close-pure
    sour soft easy undressing-me cool

    her love-notes strewn across the floor
    like slipped-off shoulders of honed wood

    light anarchy my never lonely reason
    to lend her tart my sweet-tipsy vibe

    (i inhale)

    these golden hints of spring
    seems so promising

    //

    hungry
    4
    a japanese jazz record

    original ooze

    photo at the beach taken of the sand with a wave recently washed over it and spotty froth in a sheer glossy layer over the ooze

    this nights business
    sheer sky-falls of memory
    your willful ooze is

    teasing my soles your
    frothy ooze my
    salt-bedded indiscretion

    //

    purple fast

    photo of the sea reflected dark purple under dark purple sky of pre-dawn with a rose-colored glow across the horizon and some unusual cloud formations with a tiny speck of light at the center of the horizon

    you caught me on your pleasureline yesterday
    a warning on the sounding sea-bruise of night
    at the global brink of your vaporous flight
    into the tiniest vessel of my flecked resistance

    and what would my hydrogen-burning father think
    when my limbs shudder to lie next to yours
    when i slide my fingers across the plum-skin sky
    my rose-thread-hooked by your star ungoverning me

    who steals the scene from the full face of the moon
    who steals my dream to die until another spring
    i am awoke at noon by iambs falling like the rain
    like pain or like war until the poem is written about it

    until the martyr says i was just a child in love
    and now you will repeat my morning for me

    //

    🌕

    mere eidolon

    photo at the beach of sea water washing up over black and golden sand and making a pattern of foam like animal print

    at sundown when you disappear
    like death is an unbroken sound
    my dark thought into your empty pockets
    an oyster swallowed

    //

    katabasis on an intact plum

    as the violence of my storm
    on the exquisite valley like a stem-snapped blade

    draws her meandering twin
    along the vein of your virginity

    by whose volcanic seam the black
    and greening scar is welded between

    rivers

    until the bottom of her exhalation
    where dreams our deepest lake

    (orchards of wantlessness)

    //

    Phaedrus: (as Lysias, cont.)

    which none would attempt (epi-cheirein)
    even being experienced (empeiros)
    to turn away (apotrepein)

    // 231δ

    ἣν οὐδ᾽ ἂν ἐπιχειρήσειεν οὐδεὶς ἔμπειρος ὢν ἀποτρέπειν

    //

    previously i wrote a poem called “Δ” that performed my severance with social media; it was also a faceoff between monsters (?); i wont link it because i havent read it in a while but the search button usually works

    the inward prospect of a delta

    once upon the oceans day an open secret rode forth
    enrobed in sheer sunsets and sunrises to say
    it is always and regardless of the weather okay
    to not be okay on a winged word

    she said in my opinion like roses aflame
    poetry is never okay
    poetry is the doing deed
    poetry is a metaphor for the mishap

    and it might have worked but that beachgoers assumed
    she plied postcards for the impossible
    well she spoke quietly to her own heart
    ive seen worse ways to circumnavigate this black earth

    //

    🌔

    //

    Halcyon cyanoventris
    seems nesting nearby
    very loud
    and yet so blue

    omg the genealogy of OK
    cries out
    via improbable speech
    babel bobber bauble bubble

    //

    toy

    photo at the beach looking out to the sea at sunset with pale pastel pink, blue, yellow and grey clouds and calm but wavy water washing up onto black sand and two people in the water off-center in the distance

    o love let me be none
    other than your one
    by these spent hours
    toying with me

    //

    ahistorical fast

    you come to me with your fishing game
    your hunger for hunger
    i might bite

    to stir the turmoil of that famous ocean
    the subtle friction between his loves
    our pretty little law

    your holding vibrates like a plucked string
    all beauties of the past
    swallowed

    //

    whos a good

    i heard a rumor about myself
    from you or my long-lost
    referential tendency

    the scent just strange
    like a far-flung purpose
    with charred edges

    remarkable love
    mighty hobbler
    good nature

    //

    ache

    daikon & rice vinegar
    & kopi & key lime pie
    & something i don’t recognize
    and everything else
    ive eaten at iftar

    and everybody laughing
    at my stomach-ache

    because they know

    //

    photo looking out to sea from the beach with a mass of grey cloud over a clearer sky, small breakers at the reef on not too wavy but rippled grey-green-blue water, and speckled tan and white and black gravel and coral pieces and sand

    might //

    Phaedrus: (as Lysias, cont.)

    that they claim
    they most love (philein)
    those whom they love (eran)

    // 231ξ

    ὅτι τούτους μάλιστά φασιν φιλεῖν ὧν ἂν ἐρῶσιν

    //

    philos and eros
    cacao and sea salt
    or the dog

    //

    of the lovely maker and the might of Achilles

    i think often of Achilles triple-shot
    how he returned to the war before his armor was made
    by Hephaestus of the golden-dragging foot
    to his naked rage and slaughtered twelve with just his voice

    then we are gifted some pretty face of a shield
    and as all the seas daughters in threnody behind him
    his myriad aunts and his mother verging on hysterical
    its light-footed Vulcan tuning weather that i remember

    and as amber waves of hair around her loomed fluvial
    like civilization swashing blind into the bloodstorm
    although material and form were mountainwork and metal
    a cetacean iris was blooming around her tectonic teapot

    //

    rereading book 18 of Homer’s Iliad

    hot fast & the slow burn

    eat in the dark
    shit quest
    love fast

    sleep like the sun
    die like the day
    dream of your almighty face

    devouring
    in darkness again

    //

    its sambal tomat
    under nights black thread
    and the rivermouth on fire
    its filling but on isis time

    so i haw and fret
    to make counter time
    for my ligatory chord
    for my throwing bones

    for the holy month
    for otherwise

    //

    tempe & daun salam

    //

    🌒

    a snorkeling woman

    now as the horizon evened and was empty-full
    or would you say full-empty
    about the shark tank that drew swimmers bled-
    blue-traces racing orders round my head
    for me the day would gently useless be
    a yellowish sea turtle kind of day
    and an exhale left me vast and near
    down underneath my colder spine of fear

    and as what you turned pearlescent grew
    the violet dear and clearly breaking you
    the cloud-gray whisper and the frothy wave
    was toying with your tendered ankle bone
    soft undulant sea-crinkled green
    like the linen sheen across our fathers bed
    as the tinfoil sun was flashing mean
    against your pinking arms and shoulderblades

    and as the quiet-crowded gloom below
    accustomed stinging tears to witlessness
    and the broken coral sharper needling
    against your shins armorlessness
    the looser webs of mer-light gyrating
    grew grown inside and tidal-spectacled
    and the massless intervening seemed
    the famous nobody to prove you whole

    what clever lover waiting down the stream
    could hold your palace cool and fathoms deep
    when the thunder-heading planet-threading way
    of the underwater giant was floating
    your skin the crizzling rainfall of red sugar
    returned to birth a burnt and beautiful nude
    and an undertowing current shaped
    the lunar fasting of my stone-bone-home

    it was just some local princess playing strange
    along the undead continental shelf
    an honored guest or angel amongst drowned ruins
    the snowfall of those dropped and dropping teeth
    and as the horizons blueing fuller loomed
    like grief in visibility of itself
    our rounding eyes were feasted futureless
    and we grazed over the desolation of the reef

    //

    photo looking out to sea hazy with a light frothy wave along the bottom of the image over broken coral and sand and smooth sea-green crinkled water surface leading up to an empty horizon near the top of the image that reflects a pale blue sky with placid white clouds

    rhymes //

    Indras net (what belongs to the familiar)

    around her head a sardine circlet
    around her foot mortality
    around her voice a glittering corset
    around her heart a memory

    she reflected on the dawnlight
    she was setting in her place
    she looked sober in the photo
    but you couldn’t see her face

    eye for eye and cell to cell
    did you knot me to be brave
    did you tie me from a shoestring
    toss my frame across the wave

    name the garnet in my cherry
    your horizon on the deep deep wine
    as i lost count of drowning
    for the promise of a rhyme

    for your blessed rage to swallow
    i was waiting at the altar
    and a pearl was burning bitter-sweet
    when i tasted your salt water

    when i saw you in the restaurant yesterday
    and you finally appeared
    Indras net was drawing closer
    Indras net was catching tears

    when you saw that i was deadly
    when you wrote my rib in two
    i was made and i was unmade
    to make better love to you

    and every lace undoing
    to find the heart of sand
    and every mark to fill the worth of a blade
    with the imprint of her hand

    and every glass was melting thunder
    to the predatory corner
    and a little death for the purities of power
    to the mountain out her window

    to the wildflowers evening color
    to the sky and sea and weather
    to the darker voice that rose
    to the horses all untethered

    she heard it was one million
    she heard one million seven
    the circle dreamed it would be easy
    the fishes knew it would be heaven

    you know my situation
    you know what keeps me here
    you know ocean is an islands final word
    and what belongs to the familiar

    //

    lyrics for conscience round
    music and idea from angles morts

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