Soaking + Intersection

The rain feels as if it should pass time but my shoe found aa puddle on the way into the airport. With a wet sock and sole through security into the liminal waiting lobbies, time is unbound from normal expectations, held only to the flashing time above the gate labeled letter number. My toe soaks. A mess of R names are called to have their passports checked. They check names and places but the question of time is always skipped. How long have you been here? When was the last time you ate? Do you know what day today is? Through my sock the bottom of my big toe begins to wrinkle against the uncleanable carpet. A wet toe is then traveling 350 miles per hour over mountain ranges and vineyards only to step out again into the maze of a different airport. Cold from the altitude, we are cursed to wander the labyrinth until the bold letters E-X-I-T call to us. Out and away onto the rainless sidewalk to dry on the vast concrete under the careful tick of the sun.

□ □ □ □ □

My hotel is around the corner from a Jamba juice, an escape room, and a sex shop and I’ve never before felt infinite possibility.

△ △ △ △ △

There is a little humility being in San Francisco writing poetry. How much cultural revolution and change, good and bad, was birthed from this little bay. Comparing the tourist to the tech company employee is almost pointless, everyone has a backpack. I’m on the second story of a Chipotle overlooking an intersection, Kearny and Sutter. What perspective 10 feet of elevation can give. I’ve order guac and have developed a god complex. Tiny ants of every color, following the flash of an orange hand, walk or do not walk. The sun sets above me. The lines of the street once traced with shadows of fire escapes are now muted. Shadows that created such dynamic with the five o’clock foot traffic just disappeared into the layered lines and edges of buildings built one on top of another. Paint books with one thousand shades of white cannot capture six o’clock compared to six-o-one at the end of September in San Francisco.

Both streets are one ways away from the corner on which I perch. Everyone headed somewhere. Every curb an accumulation of flashers from doorashers and ubers. Tumbling through the intersection, momentum momentum, a slight pause. A single moment when both lights are red. Like a field grouse, heads shoot up and start swiveling, making their guesses as to what happens next. Then the signs light up, green glow painted on the hoods for a moment. The accelerators kick in. The sun returns in finale, no longer looking only to make shadows but to paint the corners in a white orange, bold and staining the eyes of one side of the intersection. Will they see the light change? Do they know where they are going? Will the walkers cross into the shadow or wander onward into the bright until the sun sets and we are caught in the cool blue quiet of the night?

I’ve order guac and developed a god complex
from the corner of Kearny and Sutter

what just ten feet of perspective will grant you
both streets of the intersection one ways
away everyone moves, all at once, unrelenting
but for a brief moment, when both lights red
then the shadows stop, the five o’clock sun sending
lines of fire escapes over the white crosswalk paint
on every corner striped and confused walker’s heads
calculating what has happened, can they move?
lights go green, the white hoods of cars tinted
for just a second with the bleached green glow
then they are gone, follow the signs,
let lights direct you where
you’ve gone to only you know
one too many faces to keep track of

Menu + Repairs

Bambi’s Menu:

Barbeque everything
Pulled pork barbeque mush
Chunky barbeque chicken
Bark-beque slender pork strips
The same can
The same bowl

△ △ △ △ △

I cannot do home improvement
I can only do home un-improvement
Every project I begin chipping away
at the very definition of being a home
There is no longer a kitchen sink
What remains is laid out inside a stencil
Our mind sees like the bones of a dinosaur
pieces related but disconnected
THIS IS A FAUCET
Eight inches at the bottom
of the bathroom walls is stripped away
patchy and exposing the old yellow paint
a pinstripe of ambition and inexperience
The dryer now dries and roars guttural
louder than a construction crew
echoing their machines off the glass walls of the city
inside a monday morning
Small parts of the ceiling bulge with plaster
from punched holes or old light fixtures
the lump sanded and painted
like a makeup pimple
unnoticed until it isn’t
The front yard a cleared workspace
a raw foundation of possibility
to build upon, waits in the rain
pelting pock marks into the grassless facade
What is done is done and is unbuilt
and cannot be undone
As such, I keep pulling nails and loosening screws
waiting by the grace of god for some solution
to fall from the clouds and stop me

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

What do we need for a house?

What functions are needed our hearts
still beating steady between walls
that connection or is the condition that
when we eat the food together
the spoon still chimes against my teeth
is it power or water or a lean against
a mortgage for a piece of land
unsalvageable to the owners

Dial Tone + Chords

v5 revision

The future will never outdo the dial tone

in our quiet home of forever online life
to the depths fell the dial tone
”what is that beep when they pick up the phone
in the middle of every horror movie?”
unsuitable to give such a monumental note
a send off pianissimo

so we’ve gathered here today
friends, family, and neighbors
a flat yellowed chord trails behind
punched through the front screen
and to the mouth of a megaphone
kisses the receiver
bathing the swatch of lawn in elegy
until we let go a final time
of the note

□ □ □ □ □

give someone a ring

ringtones alone

stained yellow phone wire

evenly spun plastic wire

unstraightinably wound plastic

a tone absent of event

100 + Days

Working through a workshop with the London Writer’s Salon. Setting up what I want to accomplish in the last 100 days of the year. It’s a nice parody to April’s poem month. There’s a link to the full project brief at the end of the post but ultimately I want to be more writerly, prioritize writing, write more, connect with writers and writing more. I’m pulling the bigger take aways from the workshop but the session was enlightening to aligning myself with an accomplishable goal.

—

Questions:

Who is my future self:

• writer

• creative

• bold

• outward

• happy

What are my guiding principles:

• Dedication

• Habit

• Priority

*build your goals with a gap mindset, I am here and want to be there, or a gain mindset, I want more of this consistently

My 100 Day project is: to build a life more centered around writing

This project is important because at my core I feel most fulfilled when writing. I feel the most myself and that I have purpose in the life I’m leading. If I don’t work towards this I am further from my authentic self (link to my project brief).

Time + Talents

Time is in little compartments and we stick our little fingers into the compartment to take out as much as we need or maybe more if we’re indulgent

OR

Time is like a moving river, the source unknown, the destination unknown, and we have learned that we can walk on water

When we learned to walk on water
the yard turned to overblown rampant growth
we shared our talent, look at us upon the pond
the sink still dripped and fed silverfish beneath
When we learned to walk on water
we pocketed the applause
wrapped claps in glory colored ribbons for later
the year still slipped by after October
When we learned to walk on water
the dust balls beneath the TV stand laughed
the paint trim uneven in the kitchen coughed
the dishes stacked perilous to the sinks edge sat
When we learned to walk on water
student loans did not get the note
nor did tax season take a break
the credit card balance did not clear
When we learned to walk on water
standing out among the ocean waves
light barely scanning the horizon
we counted the clap of each white cap
waiting for answers

Beams + October

Reaching branches a summer grown
Rub the paint of porch beams shows
A raw wood grain and pull the bow
to moan a wood on wood unknown

The season end by measured flames
A forest burning more the same
Smoke rests beneath the porches eaves
Linger whisper to the porches beams

Remember that from which you came
The boldness in the face of fate
Before you fell to measured planks
Remember that from which you came

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Before the end of October

what a perfect measurement for an entire year
rampant growth before the cold

Fall + Overgrown

Tiny finches scatter as summer undenounced left with yesterday’s sunset. Now the mornings are gray, leaves will fall any day now. There’s quieter and day rises with me. A nicety not to be thrown into the heat of a day, a comforting stability around our routine actions that we forgot when they didn’t align with the day. Last fall the front tree appeared exactly full. The shape could have filled the area left for an image in the dictionary. Trimming was omitted and naturally the front tree took the opportunity to overgrow. The branches reaching through the barrier of the porch, rubbing the paint off the columns whispering “remember from which once you came”.

With the lick of a breeze
finches scatter from trees
counting seconds until the color leaves
the leaves

Reaching braches a summer grown
rub the paint of porch beams shows
a raw wood grain and the pulls the bow
to moan on wood and wood unknown

Clouds + Dialtone

My Luxury - the clouds have a sense of a stranger in a crowd who may approach someone who exists entirely outside of you. They share familiar places, this place, but in a totally unknown reality. Their approach rests more in the mind than as a real option of becoming acquainted. What are you doing so low? Looking like you might just perch yourself on the roof peak, and wait for my next move.

□ □ □ □ □

The future will never overcome a dial tone

in the quiet hum of forever online life
into the depths fell the dialtone
disintegrated against what is known
what is that beep when they pick up the phone
in the middle of every horror movie

Seems improper to give the single note
such a quiet send off so we gather today
the neighbors a phone the line pulled through
the front screen and up against a megaphone
the receiver takes hold to blanket a small swatch
of lawn with a single and final note

Moon + Murder

Super Blue Moon tonight - the next one will occur in 2037

Somewhere behind the swath of gray you set offstage waiting for your finale moment. You know I’m down here. Slowly the shade of the sidewalk changes as the drips begin to connect. The natural world has forced a choice between the rain and you, the moon. Both cannot be enjoyed yet I cannot be disappointed at the rain. Maybe less of a choice and more of a moment between the three of us. Be here now with that the world gives us. Be here when the moon rises to greet us.

△ △ △ △ △

All the things I’ve killed since buying a house:

• grass

• wasps

• slugs

• ants, so many ants

• flies, so many flies

• a tree, maybe multiple trees

• grape vines

• weeds

• A TV (repaired)

• a thermostat (replaced)

• rugs, probably 100 rugs

• caked paint between banister beams

• bamboo, so much bamboo

Doors + Saturn

** Curiosity ** Delight ** Impress **

What drives creative endeavors? Which of those three spark energy within me?
What sense of discovery is there if the work cannot take you to a place?
Poems are when you’ve adjusted your pillow in the perfect way before bed.
Vocation and Vacation are only one letter apart, perhaps it is delight.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Every door opens
Some doors are held open
Some doors allow the fall air
to follow you in
and so the home slowly rots

□ □ □ □ □

100,000 camera shots of Saturn
through two telescopes the entire night
produce a view as the eye would recognize
with the top comment proclaiming
this is photo-shopped

Time + Size

There’s something about measuring size with time that I really enjoy, it hooks well.

A window wide as five generations

Fingers thick as a twelve hour work day

Lawn the height of an entire summer

—
Sitting sipping coffee at the same pace as the clouds passing through the view of a window wide as five generations. At the bottom of the glass pane, waving every which direction, was a lawn the height of the entire season of summer. Between the window and where we are seated, in the light, dust particles float off shelves, off the books with bindings cracked a lifetime over.

Fleeting + Entrails

A poem you would throw over a house. An almost known but still unknown consequence. Never peek at the prank. A golfball into the ocean.

Liminal sense of sending a tennis ball skyward
over a home without knowing what rests
in the backyard what was left out when
the parents finally called their kids in
as the sun finishes setting in act II
summer prompting the moon to rise and call
all your friends out into the cul de sacs
to ride your bike tires along the curved curb lines
of the seconds hand ticking by on the night’s clock
what to do what to do what to do

△ △ △ △ △

My entrails are only 30 minutes long, which is fortunate for whomever comes upon this scene, trying to uncover the series of events that led to the current state. I imagine my entrails are found in an alley, spewed over old milk crates and eventually they warrant police tape. CAUTION: DO NOT READ THE MESSAGES DISPLAYED IN THE GUTS. The case is broken up by an unlikely character with an off the beat view of the world who doesn’t own a watch. They have a hard time being heard between the newspaper spreads about anything else. They might ever die in a similar looking alley before anyone listens to what they already said. But before that my entrails are misunderstood. Examined and dissected, people find unfathomable linkages between Part A and Part B while onlookers from a couch nod and say they knew it they knew it they were just waiting for someone to prove it. The most daunting part of the whole scene, while brief, is how much was fit into those 30 minutes. At points, calf deep in entrails, you could lay down and submerge yourself. Some will lay down, inhale, send up bubble from their noses. They will not know more but can say they dove in and when that unlikely character speaks up in a forum at attention to hear them speak up those who submerged themselves will have a pleasure of knowing they told us so.

Force + Curbs

Unable to enjoy a guilty pleasure guilt free.
Controlled uncontrollably by a force moving me forward.
Restore balance, running as you falter on the curbside.

□ □ □ □ □

The curb’s edge slipping
Slippery little curb edge
Gelatin curb edge
When did you become
such a gummy worm
Graspable but somehow
somehow you mold your escape
Between holes inbetween my toes
as I’m trying to find a footing

Slippery
little curb’s edge
What feels solid grounded in
is quite simply
imaginarily held together
You do not firm up against my ankles

Mattress + Wanting

Why is the mattress so flat, my body is not a board. The surface is stiff like a piece of paper folder over ten or eleven times. There is a sense that a cushion could exist which makes the stiffness that much worse, taunting. The dream is to check into any number of places and have the well dressed concierge inform me that I will be the last person ever in all of time to sleep in the room assigned to me. Should anything in the room (namely the mattress) meet my fancy it may be purchased upon checkout. Everything is for sale. So perhaps a few days later I leave and leave my home address at the front desk to deliver the mattress, maybe also a lamp. When the mattress arrives I throw a party. Inviting over friends to help me lift the odd body up the stairs and welcome the addition to my home. The night is cheerful, glasses in hands with good laughter in the air, acting as if a long lost cousin finally made their way to America. Then the early morning hours glance their minutes behind my ear and I retire, leaving the few guests to murmur with the fruit bats outside. I brace against the mattress, fingers wide, palms stretched, and I push. The mattress does well to fill itself around me, cushioned and cocooned. Then, next, the alarm hums and I know stiffness in parts of my back unknown to me before this morning. The dream is that, only a dream, and my mattress and I remain stiff.

Wasps + Windows

Dropping dead like flies doesn’t seem so awful, tonight I killed a hive of paper wasps. The arid stank of gasoline as the foam projected into the corner of the awning. They immediately fell twelve feet, bouncing off the porch railing, off the edge of the porch, falling into the lawn. There they were left, part of me hopes one will fly away in the night, find a better spot for a nest. It was shocking how quickly it took effect, how helpless their bodies, that I’ve watched for weeks around our porch columns, just fell. Maybe it was the plethora of death in a single place but time felt slow and at the same time I couldn’t count the second it took for their bodies to plummet.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

To those who haven’t thrown a rock through a window
The sound of glass shattering is the only moment you hear your own name
To those who haven’t heard their own name
There are people itching to show you a pitcher’s arm
To those who can only see in, standing out
Follow the rock, dive head first through the picture window during dinner
Listen for the call out, listen for them calling you home

Clouds + Ideation

“the sky is what we stand on to reach the beyond / high above the clouds as you see us”

Plush carpet feel of the clouds on my heels seeing stars around my arms head reeling great beyond meaning possibility dreaming no more this is reality achieving goals jump off stones skipping sploosh sinking feeling gone throwin to dogs scraps that can be laughed at echoes ringing off Saturn out here breathing fine taking from the divine to mine mind

Travel + Spell 126

Returning from Chicago over the weekend, the hotel room was on the 17th floor. At night, opening the drapes to the apartment lights spread across the skyscrapers maybe as close as I get to seeing the stars as an astronaut would. My own overview effect. So many lived in a single pane of a window, packed into a space, contained within my singular view. There’s a future feeling to it, as if I should look to the street and see different flying cars darting in all directions. There was also a bit of a futile feeling, the reminder of being a small light among many other small lights in the humid air of Chicago.

□ □ □ □ □

Spell 126 - The Book of the Dead (actual link)

Hail reader
I have come before you so that you may bring me to perfection
I know you
I know your name
See, I come before you bringing What is Right to you, I have removed What is Wrong for you

I have not impoverished the minds I’ve met
I have not known nothingness
I have not orphaned ideas poor or otherwise
I have not done that abomination
I have not caused scars that time cannot heal
I have not harmed the creatures around me
I have not reduced the words to ash
I have not taken liberty ungranted to others
I have not reduced the measuring vessel
I have not reduced the measuring chord
I have not encroached across space that was not earned
I have not tampered beyond curiosity
I have not taken from which cannot be replaced
I have not concealed intention
I have not snared the thought in thistles
I have not caught from endangered streams
I have not held back the seasons
I have not put out the fire in its moment
I have not transgressed a twilight’s bond
I have not turned back from approaching waves
I have not blocked the passage of time
I am pure
I am pure
I am pure
I am pure

My purity is that of the greatest cloud alone in a vast blue sky
because I am the breath of the wind’s exhale
who enables the leaves to chatter at you
nothing evil can befall me here
because I know the names of the gods who dwell in it

Seasons + Presence

I realized this morning, waiting for the coffee to brew, that a lot of what I write coincides with the season I’m in. Naturally, I think that makes sense. Then I thought about how many springs and how many summers and how many winters and my mind lingered on how many falls I will have. Somewhere early in life I figured out how to see the moment I am in, appreciate and take in my setting. No one taught me this. That talent and discovering the ability to be in the moment at a young age, maybe six or eight, really elevated my experience in life, my existence. I imagine some people acquire that talent later in life, maybe never at all. Right now I’m here in summer. A scrub jay chirps low in the neighbors birch tree, almost a click, a metronome counting each second passing and I can feel on the back of my hands the heat of the day arrive.

Curtain + Maze

Still thinking deeply about curtains. Nat’s van had these tiny curtains to cover over the sliding windows. I have a room in my mind. 30 foot high curtains, folds so deep your sense of direction is swallowed. In the folds of this giant room strangers meet each other, are pushed into one another by the waves of cloth. No one has the same exit out of the room and you cannot leave together. The walls are glass and glimmers of different light crack in. From one wall, a gentle dawn breaking, and from the opposite the moon reflecting off a bay or lake, and the third the purple pink haze of an unvisited forest completely unimpacted, and the last wall the light of the darkness of space pulled through the fabric, clawed through like fingers trying to reach everyone inside. How you enter the room is unclear, where you may have been before is unremembered. Only the big folds of cloth provide you purpose. The top so high up. How the folds are suspended is hidden and climbing never lets you ascend more than a few feet off the ground. Get to the wall but you cannot take anyone with you, despite the cloth entangling you. Outside the windows, beside the light, what awaits you? What are the curtains covering? What is being kept from you? What is the cloth trying to keep you here for? There is a warmth, a safeness, as the seams grab your shoulders, would it be better to find your way to the wall or to sit suspended in the weight of the cloth curtains. Someone may find you, cling to you, wrap the curtain tightly around you both and ignore the light.

Awake + Curtains

Let life move slowly. Capturing a minute in a lifetime can be more important than the epic conclusion. The morning builds momentum and a crows caw clickers my eyes and morning is here. Almost ethereal in how morning wanders in. Knowing the force of the day is looming like a wave offshore in the ocean. The heat is low and part of the comforter rests over me, a weight against the curtain chord of time trying to hold onto this peaceful rest. Uncertainty in how I arrived here, when I left last night the whole room was swollen and sweaty. The door was closed, the fan droned, wub wub wub with its slight rock in the chorus, uneven. The moon had not set but it was late. Now the sun beams from behind a tree somewhere behind the side of a house, not yet visible, but a presence felt. Off the back porch the yard shares my state. Still half covered in shade, awaiting what may of itself today and still, quiet, and certain that as a yard rests it is right where it belongs. Aside from the crow’s caw the chorus of spring birds flows underneath. Gentle notes that tickle the base of my feet enough for me to rise. The door to the room is open now, the dogs are tapping their nails across the wood floor and the fan is off. The sun casts a block of light onto the wall, a make shift sun dial telling me I’m not yet late for an engagement I haven’t planned. The remnants of the night air kick up and the breeze enters from the porch door, hugs my shoulders, and turns me outward to face what will come today.

○ ○ ○ ○ ○

Woven tasseled chord. Curtains heavy enough to need to be drawn. Curtains you could get lost in. Curtains two people can find each other in. Curtains like a hedge maze, folded over and over and over. Curtains so thick so thick that they were only ever not dusty once. Curtains that bow the bars meant to hold them. Curtains made of so much fabric there’s a sense of lavish and exorbitance, so much fabric the curtains can only be seen as excess. Curtains just meant to cover the world, to wrap our viewing porthole and contain us from the outside. Curtains for a reveal, for a surprise. Curtains suspended in suspense always, ominous of the fate behind them, controlling the flow of information. Curtains with a faux sense of structure, that you could not just walk through but if the will was strong enough you could. Big heavy dense curtains telling us all to wait.