Getting There

The 10 was a friggin' beast and the 9 had burned to

the ground. Was there an 8? No one remembers, but the 7

was made of volcanic ash. The 6 was lined with trees that bore

6 types of fruit. The 5 had a post-office

and strung wires for telephones.

The 4 was a light rail, shaking off time so the air felt free

on the 3,

but it required a helmet for falling

debris.

The tunnel of the 2

seemed longer and darker

than black, but there were cracks

in the walls from which once

in a while, the light from outside did peek through.

Then came the 1, which was made out of sound, 
and when everything stopped,

it kept going.

The Great, Last Bourbon

will be drunk in honey throated silence      and
all together with meaningful
eye to eye glances
because there is no toast
like the last
toast

Hives

black honey goes
buzzing to goo land goo

sticking to everything
like white smell glue

sap for the sticky
sick for the scent of

viscous flower meat
rush to bee

hands hot for
the holding held

home for cold
choking and stung

open to suffer
sweet waggle-dance

again
and then, and
always, again

werner's haiku

jungle has no head
jaguar nightmare beetle dream
herzog on herzog

May Not Come

These nights in April have been active

            and destructive. End not

only. Also end. End completely. And

Give over

way

to all

            end.

            Or stay

sleeping.

                       And let it.

 

Greed Poem

I want more of it. Maybe all of it.

                           Make me

orange. Where the trees hang

large and low. And I will be

                the ice

cube.  And what of the

  melting?  The disappearing
                        cold?
 

                     Maybe swallow it.

haiku of the even keel

grow poet hello
we are telling you the truth
this telephone grass

class warfare haiku

sick in your jeans, friend
i dare call you citizen
legs blue as the sky's

The Servants

                  Oh, you brute!
                  You ticklish tyrant!

We are imperfect
people who drop things.

                  (One man is writing death
                  notes by the lift
                  of the morning light:

                              There's the one where the guy guts himself.
                              There's the one where he's drowning.
                              Right now, someone has taken cyanide.
                              Lovers in hoods find the bodies.)

We are telling you the truth: The difference
between slavery and service is the lesson.

If you don't know this, there will be trouble.

           (Oh, there is no hurry.)

We are only listening.
We don't need the answers.

stalker haiku

california
who killed the fish you can't catch
old men are nets too

Saturn

The rings

are, in fact,

nothing but rubble

After all these

years, what Gravity

takes, he rides

Dust carousel

of pebble

horses

Look, you are born under

space painting

tonight

Smear

of the black

and the blue and

Starfire darts

across like golden

dogs

no melatonin haiku

sleep be extinguished
afloat though filled with water
that bed on fire

Let it be Known

The large, gray moon protrudes. The quiet orb.

Our night is outlandish. Sparkling. We will keep it when we go.

Our pockets fill with rain. So many places for holding.

We want lessons. We'll take them

without asking. Hold them

in the the hollows

of our cheeks.

Splay them

insides open whenever

we feel

like teaching.

Swallow

in secret gulping

whenever we feel like

eating.

You are the night's eye. Seeing cyclops dreams.

Handing out dignity like leaflets.

I, too, know the swell

that comes

from it.

And, Lo, here are the stars. Bringing

light to the limp

and the lifeless

so they can bear it. Here

are the strange

and the ordinary. Here

are the giant

and the dwarf. Here is

the land with everything

on it. The root.

So, go now

like a ghost. Go without

holding. Go

and let it be known.

thaiku

paranoid by way
of curry, do they smell us
and are they hungry

haiku pasolini

some brothers are dogs

though real dogs sniff don't know it

a vow, love, i do

All On

Standing on this guy, sweating needles.
Excuse me, sir-- I am not the ground.
Excuse me, sir--step aside or just keep on.

This is what you're made for.
To bear the weight of anyone.
As the earth wears it,
Hold it.

but her haiku will

sex in an empty
swimming pool won't fill it up
ninety percent water

Three Days Until Los Angeles

Let your mind go, and your body will follow.

Enthralled by spirits that
visited her at night. Set about seeking.

At night, he felt some frightening influences from her room. After the Mojave.

She said, I will love you last. And Always. Acorns to oaks. Soul to lead to gold.

This darkness: Hiding inside like an appendix.
Nearly every one of these passages has been tampered with.

The Bomber Will Always Get Through

Sirens sound all summer. We are the arms. And the ambulance.

Still, the music plays.
Picture it. A long walk through the fog of witness. The refusal to let go.
The bells.
The voices.
Deep observation and then.

Self love:  To never need resuscitation.
To get it from within.

haiku for frequent flyers

the ground bears its light
outside our airplane window
wing and cloud, and eye

barroom creationism haiku

i didn't notice
that shape until it was done
two beers from adam

All the Way Down

This evil may indeed move through history. Shake it. What else is in it? The strange thing about the dog is that it did not bark, my dear Watson. Now you call us friend. Now we are singing.

And loudly.

Aged in filth. Any longer and we'd bloom. It's cleaner.
To go without. To eat. To eat everything. A first-class disaster. Dripping in witness.
I'll warm you up, later.
I'll seal up your eye holes. And ear plugs. And silence. I'll stuff you all up with it until nothing
else fits.

And the opposite.

A steady diet of lavender seeds and earthworms. Separate from the things that are seen. Sufficient emptiness. The ample.

At one point or another, one must acknowledge that some things in reality are foundational.

If such a thing were to exist.

Maggie Nelson's Answer to the Question, "What's the most helpful creativity technique you know?"

I know there are many who believe in the Trollope school of thought, that one should wax one's ass to the chair and spit out novels or sestinas or whatever without waiting around for that elusive, romantic, ghost-in-machine, inspiration. But for me the work of being a writer is the easy part. I like being at work. What I like less are the soggy, ill-defined but probably necessary periods between monsoon and drought. The periods of silence, inactivity, and aimlessness that inevitably punctuate a life. Being possessed is pleasurable -- it feels good to lose control of the car while also somehow staying behind the wheel. But abiding with a dead or resting or paused brain, or numbness, or ordinariness, or sanity -- that's harder for me. So the best trick I know has less to do with tapping into creativity and more to do with cultivating the capacity to live without it. To let it go, and not feel as if the plug has been pulled on life. This abiding demands a certain kind of acceptance: If it is better that I write something again, let me write something again. If it is better that I never write again, let me never write again. (The prayer I'm cribbing from actually requires a more radical acceptance: If it is better for me to be dead, let me be dead.) I wouldn't call this a trick, exactly; it's more of a renunciation.

Poet Anthony McCann didn't teach this to me, but he smartly reiterated it to me the other day. We were talking about these periods, and he just said something simple like, the hard part is learning how to bear them. Just knowing that someone else is up against a similar problem is often enough to help me in a profound way. More profound, probably, than any nugget of advice. Neither he nor I, as relative newcomers to Los Angeles, has yet figured out how to write about the city, so we keep taking long hikes at dusk, looking for coyotes, and, at the summit, staring in awe at the ridiculous expanse of the city below. Waiting for the lights to come on, I guess. There is no guarantee that they will, but every time I've been up there, they have.

All These Things, Gravity Can Do

Sit and let the body open. Like it needs it. Like it is going nowhere until. Like it's growing. All days are the same day, but still the body opens. What falls out. What doesn't. What wants to; what can't. What never will. The colors. The sadness.

......................All these things, gravity can do.

Wait for an opening and take it. Like you know.

Don't do this. Unless. You're ready for trouble. You're buckled.

Hard to believe. The forces. The cellular questions. The quiets.

A Few Words About Sadness

1.

The absence
....of music,
of rhythm

This, you feel.

When time goes over,
....not as a silent cloud
But a terrible storm.


2.

Basket case.


3.

Not so bad, really
......if you put sugar in it
......and call it "baby."


4.

Now
I am moving.
Now
I am standing still.

No, I Cannot Stop Shaking

No, I cannot stop shaking. I've been in Vallejo for days. The sky has turned red like it's burning. I drank wine all afternoon with a mystic. He told me unreasonable things. Now night comes like a tarantula. The darkness is in me, too.

The First Three

1.
One lady lay
upon a bed of sails
waiting for the storm
to ebb
to disclose
the new way
of laying

2.
This man is a monster
with a mouth full of battles.

Everyone will leave him as
fast as they can.

He knows it, but he cannot
calm down. Not now.

3.
A boat is a body lost.

A lady sails silently.

A man will never stop
until he has to.

Los Inocentes

In the trek interior,
...I could no longer
feel her

In the grove of bone
.....trees, she was
everything

Untouched,
....unseen and
unmounted

Unflinching,
.. uncalled-for,
....unabashed

Sick of looking
....at seabirds,
she sleeps soundly

In Boredom,
....in bedrooms
the mainland

Imprisons the
...heartland
without asking

How dare we?

The Ants

The Ants are
.....here, no
one is leaving

Hungry,
....smelling
not seeing

Hurry, no
...one is
speaking

Dirty,
...we are
not cleaning

Bleeding, like
.....no one is
healing

The Ants are here
.....they come
while you're sleeping

The Walls are
.....sealed, no
one is leaving

We hate this poem
......more than
........the Ants
..........that wrote it.

The Ants are here,
......not even
bargaining,

We can carry
anything.

How It Went

It went like this:

A bird that was

....perched on

.......a rock

is now flying right
...........for us

like a feathered

missile

(It's that feeling
......of finding

what you'd hoped

....was lost

then just

asking disaster

to fly in

the window like

...a bird

who couldn't tell

it was not sky)

She said
....I am a woman
of feathers,
and
I am a woman
of beaks with
no teeth
and
of cilium songs

My nest is on fire.

(I am a human
airplane
I have emergency
exits, I will
....use them,
and soon)

I have a four-
chambered
...heart,
hollow bones,
I perch,
....and I preen

And now I have an inkling.

(There is language
...only useful
when landing

I am landing,
...........not
....speaking)

So now I am owl,
....I am osprey,
I am shoebill, I am
nightjar,
I am albatross.

I am white-eyes and
cockatoos and
...crescent-chests,

I am the New World Vulture.
I am the Disaster.
I am Loving This.

I don't know
that I'm not
........sky

My nest is no more
........than a scrape
on the ground

so I brought
......the fire
......to it

I am landing.

Like lightening.

I can't help it.

I have lost
.....what I'd hoped,

and I don't want it back.

The Slow Dignity of Worms

I will write what I have to. There are reasons. I will not write the reasons, because the reasons do not matter. I will write of what matters. Of waking without really sleeping and finding nothing is the same. Of the long fall; of the sudden stop. Of plummeting and of plumage on the way down. Of the real, hard texture of wood. Of what's really going on down in the dirt. Of sitting still and of spinning, spinning, spinning.

I have a message from the people: We are sick. I think it's the strip malls.

There is no such thing as authority, and power dissolves in an instant like pudding. We need to be okay with that. I am making breakfast out of the soft morning light. I am calling you over to share it. We can hold the light in us all day long, and we can share it. By evening, we are like peacocks, and we are glowing.

This is how we sleep: when the inhale runs out, we pretend it isn't so. We are falling.

Rhythm is imaginary, but it is the answer. When the ground shakes, I dance like a motherfucker, and I do not collapse. When the ground shakes again, and everything falls, I surrender. At the bottom, I share my breakfast with the worms. They will bring the light back to the surface.

Please listen: It takes time, but if you bear the wait, the birds will paint the sky with it.

The Ten

1. No roulette--slot machines. If it lands on three peyote buttons, I'll donate my brain to the next available coyote.
2. No collegiate stripper companionship. Only tumbleweeds marching in arm-n-arm chorus line to "Rhianna".
3. Shirt would be tucked in.
4. Would tip the casino roulette guy before rolling on the floor like a baby.
5. Would flush that toilet before vomiting.
6. Would flush toilet after.
7. Eddie Money
8. Life Is A Highway
9. Black Adder on the Bad Hand
10. Would yell into the open arms of desert, "Yogurt, a dollar fifty at the Pic-Pac on MacGallsey!"

I Am My Lunch

One meal, chewed
...slowly on the left
side of my mouth. If I could

......eat your words,
I would and I would
....tell you all about it.

The bottle cap says,
...."I am Grateful."
And I am, but I

...forgot, so
...I think sometimes objects
know more than I do.

.........This chant won't
leave my ears: Ong Sohung, or
..."I am thou." I am

and you are
...and we will let
the words remind us .

..while we chew
them slowly, with
......a sore and battered mouth.