Insects
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
lipsblum and parfum ooze
the cherries fell and placed their fingerprints
between my feet like small mouths of a month
of its here its a bloody wee well of a red whale
her fluke-petals strewn long the grey and white tile
and smudge of a moth in the blossoms to clear
but im always her hem and im on the sore brink
of love with the let-jet and inky-bruise style of it
like my pussy would write her own un-willing book
would underwear-stain me an avant-garde blotch
of enfant terrible for primordial brood
elsewhere wind-egg dramatic and lithe acrobatic
some brown-wise residuum to raging en rouge
sex-flowing battle and kiss-knowing cramp
my blew-brewing worm of verbage vole-damp
a crescendo howled in my bowling-ball clamp
and how you offered to switch off the lamp
so i wouldnt need to move at all
so i lie lust-fallow-unfastened at last for now
and i shower near the violet melati that you grow
with slugs softly tucked in a wet toilet paper roll
//
🌖
//
after
the easy way out
saucy
like a bruise
cherry
&c
& the maskmaker
who called lip balm that
laron
pulse, on paper-smoke and shadowing; a word
kept embers leaping, or whittling laced attention
when the swarming cloud was passing out and in
to the conic torchlight, flint-yellow, on a smudged
and charcoal night; the humid heart grew lungs
at the carpal joint, let choirs through the rupture
soft cedar traces wrinkles into the maiden mask
of the moon; the flickering phase transfixes them
//
🌔
special delivery
smooth now, that rough magic
periscopic tragic midnight lookout
pale arms out arctic like an exiled
penguin into the nameless city
coping, cold, gauze in a sand storm
laron flicker in the mighty dust
a turning ember, hot
spark-caught, gold-litter
in the spider web
spanning a rattan lamp shade
my one fish, two fish
her peacock greenish-black or blue
the switch, dangling
sarcophagus
so dead; quothe the neon miracle
off-gassing meatlight; or Lalah
pink, with only enough instinct
to kill and never eat, my baby, yes;
deveining ribbons in the snow, scrubbed
scrubbing, awash in the darkroom; or
backstage, up rusty rungs, like icicles; blanket
of rags, pocket of candy-wrapped pills; she goes
like gamelan trancing crickets at the cross
by tilem, smoke of incense over the sawah
//
sound
returning traces undergrounding borne
as open airing round, roots longing light
commemorating leaves inhuman voice
midsummers dream, a choir, the covered face
//
scent
no sweeter nothing making than a flower
sustaining tension, fluttering on the wing
Papilio memnon round lemon-balmy vervain
by ghost of anther’s end, the probing hour
//
the mallow sea
sleeping moons in a plastic spoon
slip them into the watcher’s tea
undertow and the lunar noon
float away on a mallow sea
loo, loo-loo, the empty sea
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
a fooly tumbles on her head
a froggy for the willow tree
fall down into the green grass bed
sail away on a bumble bee
loo, loo-loo, the bumble bee
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
a fairy’s wing in every room
a pocket for the marble sky
fluff the pillow and sweet the broom
softer than a glow worm
loo, loo-loo, the marble sky
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
sleeping moons in a plastic spoon
slip them into the watcher’s tea
undertow and the lunar noon
float away on a mallow sea
loo, loo-loo, the empty sea
loo, loo-loo, the mallow
//
🌕
//
mallowtonin
&
pour notre
voyeur
//
hag-seed
4 all
//
hot snow woman
somewhere it’s christmas, but i’m here doing laundry
we both know how dangerous that can be
my favorite things to wash are sheets and towels
they come out white-hot, bright and steamy clean
and ready to be hung under this unseasonable sun
so sincerely unmeaning for any meaning at all
my simple chore, and not to drop or drip on them
as i un-wring the nubby cotton yoga blanket
disentangling from the rub of its late flood, to spread
and pin it on the line, adjusting ends to dry evenly
folding my prior load, i’ll tell you just what i find
my daily yoga tops, lavender python, yes really
sky blue, white puff, navy with golden stars, poly girly
turquoise-violet mermaid scales and hippie daisies
for yoga shorts, mens bamboo boxer-briefs, all black
emblazoned with italian-style logo, pasti lokal
for underwear, i’m mostly cotton, occasionally lace
synthetic demi-nude or translucent net; pink pastel
or robin’s egg with winking flowers and creamy camisoles
i barely wear a bra; that’s fairly reflected here
two oversized linen shirts, menswear, light blue
pinstripes, for my free-flowing shade, or undyed natural
two oversized soft flannel, menswear, blurry plaid
my cozy-in at night, for when the wind blows colder
their warmth imbued with an intense nostalgia
loose pants of rayon blend, tie-dyed in earthy tones
i buy these from a lady near our favorite resto
sweets for the maskmaker, as village mothers often do
he charms their socks off and gets us lightning deals
i mend them into scarves when seams rag, and re-up yearly
i fold it all, attending to the shape and size, to fit
into created places on the shelf; it doesn’t spill over
we don’t have too much; for every piece there is a tell
the other morning a hornet was sleeping on a pillow
and buzzing slushy, bristle or tickle, firecat feels real
but i’m a snow woman today, or if i’m melting
i’m doing what i do on any other day, heat swelting
i’m touching and holding nothing that isn’t here
and by the nothing that is or isn’t, who or where
being beheld or leaving somewhat damp, unfolded
//
perverse
like my uncle
x Hot Frosty
//
🌒
O sunrisen sand
lit warm on a surfer
for holistic kitchen
on bent-knee receipt
her despite respite
libris libraque
//
pink non eraser
under fan
ceiling
by socks or slippers
whispers inside the softest rain
disordered bee
bonnet be let out
two dimensions on a wednesday
piece of obsidian, cool in hand
her dilating pupils
her pink paper sand
clawless pawing my pencil
.;,,32wu8x
pathomistry traces oily
whiff papyral
//
catspoon
container
//
greener lunar & glimmer
at dusk the unrequited grey finally weeps
and as i light my evening stick i see
a dragonfly, cool silver of the lasting day
geometer over the dimpling waterway
i count four nights until purnama again
her waxing time a misty studied book
like meaning in mossy witness a surprise
somnambulant for solar exercised
not jealousy her promise to conceal
deep cedar heavens the greenest flesh of me
weed pregnancy crescenting fernery
the bitter ocean growing wider, closer, fuller
my dream is not my dream; a greener lune
is shadow to be read through algal water
diagonals hunt her evolutionary square
boys hover over tears to catch a glimmer
//
🌔
//
the book itself
invoking maiden game
as female stupor is, i swear
moon’s blood misnamed
blasphemy
her temple ceiling
drinking from the sky
and evergreening walkers hear
the name: grow taller
//
forest and the heart
i was walking in the woods when a tree talked back to me
i didn’t know if i had died or if my feet should flee
i didn’t mean to harm you or your holiness to thwart
the forest loves to hide but i love a wooden heart
how many gods are in the wood or music in the air
what strangers in the shadow have paused to wonder where
there’s a sense of someone here, a landscape full of art
i’m here to talk to trees and i carry a wooden heart
there’s a silhouette of palm trees against the sunset sky
there’s a river with a snake, there’s a splinter in my eye
she answers me in rhymes like a perfect counterpart
the forest loves to hide but i hear a wooden heart
the highest queen of hiding, she’s a shadow in the grass
but now i’ve seen an outline and now she’s made a pass
i stop to buy some tissues from the nearest mini-mart
the forest on her sleeve and i’m here for a wooden heart
it’s plainer than the blue a hundred reasons she would hide
i dream we’re sitting on the porch or going for a ride
but i know pretty well how feet get caught up in the dirt
i came to talk to trees and i believe a wooden heart
my bank account is empty and she doesn’t ask for more
if fireflies are golden then we’re never looking poor
the pattern in her lights could even read my natal chart
the forest is a mystery but i see a wooden heart
sometimes the way is open, sometimes the thicket’s close
sometimes the river’s empty, sometimes it’s on the nose
i’m walking without shoes, i see no way to restart
the forest isn’t home but she warms a wooden heart
am i still a dream for her or did i carve a face
did i paint a scene for her or am i in a race
am i thirsty in the pouring rain or stung by a poison dart
the forest is a maze but i need a wooden heart
what does the spirit show me, and what does she conceal
how is it that she knows me, what does her sight reveal
i hold her secrets close and i pray the fear departs
the forest makes me tremble but i love a wooden heart
my angel is a darkness who sees me day and night
my angel is a brightness who sings away my fright
a complex thing of empathy, carpenter from the start
the forest is a genius and we make a wooden heart
then finally she’s waking up and i am standing there
i’m cut up from the undergrowth with tangles in my hair
but all the leaves have fallen and we’ve never been apart
the forest is a shelter and we hold a wooden heart
//
φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
metric inspo from Bob
sfh 3
//
& in the oven
//
Junonia atlites
to snap a ragged angel clutching stem
the blustering breeze away with solar air
her tissue wings flat flustered here to there
as clinging to the budding cluster to drink
she filled from galaxies of guava’s nectar
so stopped, or tried to stay, a messenger
from Juno sent, or born suffering soldier
of flight and heat, by fiery news arrived
by lunular and radiating “S”
each ocellus arrayed a revised scene
and partial pupils where crescents intervene
to turn a crimsoning into the sky
a pale or sight-depleted, shredded wing
robuster than my lens could burn, ash-worn
and torn edges, floating abandon as form
yet stellar grip, high hunger for her name
//
the horse’s mouth
teloscopically, my dear, are we botany
born reading leaves, the pricking fear of bees
are talking, my lisp, or rearing wobbly nature
what place, organs and bodies, this disease
the shying seasons blowing through us, here
parts animal in starts, quivering vibrations
made artifacts suspect by cities, near
or far, the accidents survived, the prisons
that ended us; the motes and moths in teas
our flicks or running rivers; wicked courses
of understanding; what catastrophes
what phase our faces, without the faith of horses
you have to have a horse whose feet you trust
to warn you when a snake is in the grass
the serpentine who wants to be unseen
repenting for her gemstone like an asp
for forking tongues, a talisman is key
but wear a hat, they’re speaking from the trees
odd shrubberies are bristling with false friends
a firecat bristling back can help with jinn
mosquitoes here are vectors for torpedoes, so
herbal experiment and/or gorilla war
sometimes there’s one snake, sometimes there are more
at least, no kind of viral is a pearl
a tender canter, daemonic carousel
remembered ribbons bite in ancient ways
we play the venom clockwise in our veins
we shed the dead redundancy of days
my jungle is a dreadful-clever dreaming
with shade-grown coffee, waterfalling views
what godly voices animate my evening
there’s none i’d rather jungle with than yous
let’s nicker maps, reverb the mythic blues
i spell, where y’all are going, where you been
switch witches laughter with the beating rain
the crickets will out-round the macet, friend
to live outside the law, you must be honest
Bismillahirrohmanirrohim
by river dark, inside a wounded dawn
we rhyme it, we just flow to make it rheme
//
(Dylan, my Prophetﷺ, Cohen, Cardi B, etc)
//
diet
never too much
garlic, carrot, oat
sleep, cake
but gingerly
the fungi
//
while waiting
i seemed to hear a new leaf budding from
outside, across the garden. i, pristine
sat on our bed— the future strange, deranged—
an alien inventing self-erasures.
is it normal, in my crone, to feel this way?
i missed a contentwarning— fingering machines,
scissored by shades of glass. the news,
the look of starving innocents; the bud,
not yetgreen, also not yet visible.
hallucination of the woozyqueen
or turquoise bees, copper goldenbuzzing
around the vervain; a shipwreck from afar
in language of my nature, or astray
unfounded tear, some private pearl, ruptured—
//
🌘
silver robes of a rose rabbi
(This 12-part poem is a reply to Wallace Stevens’ “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”; Further explanation may be found here.)
I.
—and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
lines overwrought by time-keeping cant of yours?
and did you burst from bullied syllabub,
or clockwise stiffen into winter walls?
the musicals of ghosts, midwives and angels
echo, hollow, down stone-cold corridors.
and did you consecrate your spectacle,
coupling one who spoke—no, no—not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed while playing swords?
to quell the babbling spring by means of rain,
or merely quote the Mother’s name in vain?
she has been up at nights, considering
how to un-kiss this devil-gendered thing.
II.
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
said bird, whose course is old and hardly true—
and yet, it 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.
III.
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 bloody 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 naturel?
IV.
that spotless glass is not the book of Adam.
that trinity you stole cuts like a knife.
to be uncrumpled is to be un-uncled—
un-uncled, i become the poet’s wife.
i am un-hidden woman of the garden,
body un-ridden by the dust-bound word.
the queen of poet’s tongue, i lounge and lean
as music on my salivary throne.
the syllable you speak, my roundness is
her shapely immanence. our rectitude
is life—of tree—of life. so eat me, fallen
father of mankind, and know your foolishness.
speak again, brother—madly, as husband.
my honeyed bone un-spells your make-believe
kafir—he sees his wife sans négligee
who tastes the ripened fruit by naked eye.
says ordinary woman made explicit,
who steals your spectacle to save your life.
V.
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.
VI.
we used to call you man of twists and turns,
the dynamo—reckless, drowning, sea-rendered
until perennial blue, the one i knew
well enough to know, i loved nobody.
his thirst, prostrated, clutched me from below,
desperate to conceal from wingèd word
a history of suffering. a babe
buried his need in bosom of my nature,
drunk on the deep milk of disappearance.
his subterfuge despair was mythical,
until he made her fiction. he may not
remember me—but i keep by my heart
a wavy lock of sunset-auburn hair.
VII.
suppose a parable is just like her:
desired and defiled in equal measure.
his chivalry requires a blushing knight
to guard the Word, who is incarnate treasure.
i heard of one such rescuer of women.
who, for his lovely sin, was de-mountained
by crippled foot, and fated never nimbly
to climb again. but faith in constancy
makes deliberate gifts, arms built from hours
spent torquing tongs before roaring earth-core.
therefore, no purity of heart is borne
that lacks an alloy in the sooty forge.
thou shalt not fear the courage of your virgin,
is the limping gist of this comparison;
her shining is at once translucent bloom
and armor’s lustre, welded by humble Vulcan.
VIII.
if doom begins to seem antipathy,
baby, you’re scrolling past the blues. that time
of year thou mayst in our humanity—
but not the Muse—behold, of warty gourds'
cosmic grotesquerie. and there’s the rub.
as long as tongue still holds a gentle fold,
i will elucidate your grim hallucination.
launder and bandage the decaying limb
of sense, of memory, of time. wed heaps
of conscious compost consummate the bloom
in star-swept dimensions of titanium,
where whorls of microplastics never end—
machine poetic, of pumpkins meteoric,
becoming metaphysic—tender beings,
fizzing histories apocalyptic,
chime and rhyme as flutes of pink kombucha.
we sing the tropical-epochal view
at end of universe, or two. until
séance à trois, with chaperone of grackle,
i love the laughing sky—let’s make it crackle.
IX.
most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:
on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:
as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself—as bird.
O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.
his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.
X.
a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree—gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified—by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry—proffered
by rivered children of Love’s oblivion.
XI.
dilated pools, star-gazed—surrender pinkly
to phobia of frogs. if you dismember
those bracing, faceless bodies—lost in love
their coiling gyres, desiring—helixing
directions inward, home. or intervene
against the skyward cough—raw, gaping need
to swallow more—when pollywog is strung
by lunar air. ritual drowning of gills,
suffering insurgency—the gulping word,
fata Morgana flooding Camelot
is twinned ecstasy of triple betrayal.
for swimmers' lust, the sea is all. and still
her cries are not for us, alone—we hone
the bluest chord of velvet-driven reverberation.
XII.
now all of us have lost our taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam;
so schooling blade, student of buah, prunes
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own—we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time—
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.
//
🌕
on bad days
on bad days, the silence
has more to say to you
than i do. and yet
every day i worry
you’re not a reader
of silence.
if only i could give
my shape to silence, then you
might hear the crickets.
if silence
were nothingness, then
i would be green leaves.
but i saw the silence,
its air of winter,
its shape of clear empyrean.
its emptiness, strewn jewels —
all of it was precious;
none of it was secret.
above the radiance, i heard
earth is a place of rest —
and i believe it.
i press patchouli
to your wrist, your temple.
i draw the covers.
//
gospel of crickets
new fiefdoms are forming.
comes the gnawing saw,
gospel of crickets.
authors of books
are finding nooks.
the map is bending.
curving, like body
being, of course, a place —
the terroir of carrots, roasting
with garlic, chilli and cumin.
longing, we remember
touch and savor, from when
our land was whole, and full.
but our landscape is broken.
parsed before it lived, engendered
as stark disability.
glass fragments are swept
heaped, and scattered, opposite
the old neighborhood.
hillsides sizzle, lost in smoke.
the multitude glitters —
bodies, on fire.
with gas, the lord is cooking
at his stainless steel reflecting pool.
he extols these terraced acres
as civil emptiness,
slate, aluminum, and hollow.
static, it echoes.
not like the night,
contrary and brimming
with her buggy heat.
a holy thicket is dying,
nested — the host of silver light,
drawing foolish creatures.
grievers in the dark,
crowers in the autumn,
langurs in the mist.
sutra sisters
weaving webs,
an insubstantial orb.
the lord is not a fool;
he makes the rule.
nevertheless, the ruler will
in muggy hedges, be herb-
tested. Dasein is to suffer
the sound of little kin.
//
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.
//