On The Run, From And In, Bikini

Snapping fingers to the “brain
Stem’s” amazing vase,
On which,
Amazing grace,
An apple seed’s drawn,

A man, his pet merganser
Quacking happily
By his
Side—all slide, flee—
Mispronounces love.

“Song goes,” goes crazy. The vase
With which love’s watered,
One thoughts
Sweetly pottered,
Is creamy inside.

Its exterior, speckled
Like a high-grade egg,
Reflects
Her chic-chic leg
As it “steps over

The yellow lines,” lines yellow
As fresh Grey Poupon.
I don’t
Like mustard, drone—
Rhone timbre, river

To look at not drink—till I
Make sounds which, I thought,
Cannot
Be, be begot
By these bones, this frame.

Notes: The poem above is in honor of Bloof Book's celebration of Sandra Simonds' book Warsaw Bikini; here's the link: http://www.bloofbooks.com/news.html . For my competition entry, I have started forth from Simonds' poem "Your Own Winnebago," which can be read on the Verse Daily website.

Another Brief "Take"

I don't think a desire to get away from a focus on difference means, "in essence," advocating indifference! As well, going back to water, I hope that basic needs don't further create systems of distribution which make more and more of the (well, one of the) worst kinds of difference--deprivation! In other words, new distinctions made to further deny beings of what's necessary. I'm tempted to "say" that to focus on difference is a way of thinking which is still thoroughly predicated on binaristic thinking, as both binaries and differences are a divide space, not one which has conjunction as the activity.

More On Difference

Maybe islands aren't the best models for difference: difference as barricades is, perhaps, more like what I'm concerned may, too easily, occur. I wonder, as basic resources, namely potable water, are going to become at the fore of all forefronts of importance (of course in many places this likely is already the central issue), whether difference as a model for understanding the world will loose some of its currency. Overall, much of what I've posted today is just a paraphrase of one strand of Amyarta Sen's book Identity and Violence, which strikes me as a really wonderful book.

Difference

Some strains of academia's, seeming, emphasis on difference frustrates me; difference, by itself, strikes me as not enough, not unless the differences are put into relations--preferably positive ones (which do not fall along cleancut binaries); at its worst, is it just me or could emphasizing difference just create more islands (and not an archipelago!) which could create even more alienation than there already is. I get that there is a scaredness of liberal humanism, which has often had too many elisions to be true, but I believe the world needs to, again, seek wholeness.
Relatedly, I don't think feminism should specifically be about women, but instead the world: people, non-human animals, soil, fresh water, oceans, air. I do not mean this proposal to be an excuse to going back to ignoring women, non-whites, non-heterosexuals; they're a part of the world and so need lots of attention! Feminism, to me, is as perfect a world-view as there currently is.
Maybe the Watts Towers make a good objective corellative: the materials used to make the mosaics are fragments, smashed-up once upon a time wholenesses, but they are then reasembled into a new whole, one whose essence is a million differences.
These musings are far from perfectly expressed; please, if you happen to read this, do not take these statements as final, but rather as a start which will have to start again.
As well, I don't mean to, via the Watts Towers, sneak in phalocentrism!
I hope you, whoever you are, are doing well!

Hello

So far I'm focusing on posting poems, as I'm more than a bit nervous to venture into posting prose-thoughts, tho eventually I'll have to go there! Hopefully soon! Well I will "say" this: I'm hoping to write a complete pop-novel draft over the next however many months. Ok, back, sigh, to poems; mm, maybe a few notes are "in order": I tend towards all sorts of modes at once--set-forms, measured lines, verse libre, minimalist, maximalist, overtly traditional, overtly experimental--:

Marrow

How now
My dear
Do you
Want it?

With a
Dollop
Perhaps
Of marrow?

We pull it
Straight from
The arrow
Still smoking;

Yes if
You must
Insist on
Accuracy

The arrow is
Steaming;
Are you
Dreaming

Or is that
A must buy
Bottle you see?
Wine's my specialty.


Birds

The bird is, but
What else,
A daemon,
Demonstrating
How, in some
Cases,
Flight always
Perfectly
Intersects
Devilish uplifting,
The kind
Which cons you
Into unkindness
Others might
Call unheard of,
Which you
Blithely listen to
As if it's not
You who is
Addressed,
Man well,
Manuel, Western
Wear of some
Stars, twinklings
Whose lights were
Last seen
Three decades ago,
Or one year and
Forty seven days
And five
Weeks ago
My parrot
Flew away
To live with
A gang of ones closely
Related, but with
A coral,
Ruddying to red,
Patch on the nape,
Not purple
To fortify
Your soul, you
Who sits
Here, half
Baked grain to
The right, in front
Of a state
Penitentiary,
Where the horns
Are ye-gads guards
Blare, not ones of plenty,
Long time
Not amplitude as
Some bones pass through.


Marrow

Every time someone
Handed me a square
It was marrow

Human
Horse
Cow
Duck
Dog
Buck
Pig
Elk
Pigeon

Cracking lobster knuckles
Messing up the garnish

Good wine
God win
Godwin
No-no
Or know
Good win


Nascar

Dude where's my car
Whoa far out
There are no cars



Minerals And Flowers

Dialogue between flowers and minerals
Otherwise known as watch them grow
Out some soil like some trees would do better with

Never forget the nutritive
Content you step on


Marrow

Sweet fen
Flickers at a root

Fumbles at her soul till
Here's marrow on brioche

For us to nibble while
Perhaps we

Quibble over letters
Of a disputed alphabet.




Dreamy Division

Door

Frame
Frame opening

Portal

Wentletrap
As light wanders into wind-whorled waters

Inner than marrow

Cubic

The liquid I couldn't lift


Marrow

Iron in the blood

Blood
Files

Filings

Flings

As of
The whoosh when

Soul wings

Off and
Out for

Far out



Bloodbloom

Blood roses
Iron bloods

Rust like blood-stains

Destined to
In the end
Make no
Choice

Lead
Poisoning

Abloom in blood

In the of a
In a the


Shoot

Taking the
Long way
To there where

You are
Looking
Like you

Welcome
Company.
I love when

This species sings
Exactly
This way and

Everyone.
The photographer
Ends up

Taking the tiger's
Temperature.
We are in a book;

No
We are in
A wood

Before being milled.
Cheers to you
And your fine

Cereals;
If you're wondering
Why the beer

Looks weird
It's because
It's made from millet;

You must admit
That's
Extraordinarily chic

And speak
Again
To the fen seeds

Sprout from
If you cry your
Heart out into help.

More poems

Most Literate Letters

This beautiful day you've become your muscles--
Galloping across dandelions--then
Hard--harder--thighs grip your pelt's rip--till soul rolls
Right to the horizon--withers when

One looks again; and if I could I'd see
Sun glaze your withers goldsoft--but it's hard
To look at that dazzle for fear dear me
Will rip right off to a visage cartoon has starred;

I guess it's exactness has me wither
At what hardly ceases to astonish;
I take too much; I admire the giver
Who may flood--silt--soil--but not admonish;

Although it's true a withering address
May fix--the hard part's forever a mess.

Note:

1--The poem above is my first attempt at writing a Shakesperean sonnet which fits Helen Vendler's criterion, in which there must be at-least one word repeated in each stanza, and that then too is in the couplet as a "couplet tie"


Pretty Bell

The
Theologian
Rang
A bell

Made of copper
With some
Straw stuck;

Honey-colored source
Of sound
Insinuates
Cerement

Cements someone to
Their Vision
Is necessarily flighty.


Pieces

1

In the gleam of an ivory eyelet
My power animal, my giraffe,
Smelled an overwhelming
Odor of violet.

2

The author of
The serious
Drama wondered
Why didn't
Anybody laugh
As if there are
No funny parts!

3

Her newly completed sleeve
Consisting
All of hearts
Or the word for heart
In 12 or so languages
Makes her happy
So she buys
A carton of oranges at
A corner
Then 3 streets later
Realizes the fruit
Weighs a ton given
How many
More streets there are to go.


Shimmer

Human insides
Never rest;
Marrow
Always making cells
And so forth;

When it comes
Down to it
Nothing ever rests:
Electrons
Shimmer if only our

Touch weren't so far
Away--awash--
Wide open--spice-
Petal starred portal;

Beauty is mortal:
Even mountains die;
Some day seasons
As known now will
Stop working;

Will swallows still wing
Their bodies to
San Juan Capistrano?
Will humans grow wings?
No we'll be breathless;

Perhaps deathless
Will become a
Human possibility;
Death is
Necessary;

I'd be very
Pleased to meet
An orca;
I'd say 'hey Uncle Sam'
After Elizabeth
Bishop's toucan!

Getting a tan
Sipping a colada
I'd be sublime;
The palm fronds
Clack like pelicans' beaks;

A freshening of rain falls--speaks
Rainbow like the salsa
Brightening my nibbles;
Being a president
Seems like it'd be embarrassing.



Currently Untitled

At the center of a whirling--the electrons--there is a godess;
Grain-colored locks wave about like foliage; her plaits
Are almost the shape of banana leaves; eye shadow the hue of
Newly sprouted grain lines brows plucked like a lute by
The hands of an expert player; the key to life
Is learning how to play the piano and desegregating;
I cannot touch the goddess--only pray--try to partake in the whirling.

More poems

After Barbara

1

A red here, a reading and its echo there,
A mood, a medieval Latin,
An official language in a land
Where most people speak vernacular.

2

There was a lietmotif;
Red leaves; red leaves; red leaves;
Ghosts stripe a transept; a girl sees;
Revelation is rarely brief.


Currently Untitled

Roman
Arches.

Romance.

In from out bright moonlight
He sees he's been burned.

Days later
Upon peeling
The patches look
Like rose petals.


After And For Nathaniel Mackey

We the
Horripilate
Echo off
Rockwall

Wag our tongues luscious with logoscat

Cuts through the fullest
Range of chains
Shackle perception.

With our flimflam
We've flabbergasted
Every gut in the city we've

Been through
Though a local
Scoffed more like barely around
No through
Makes a sense hard to argue against.

Most of the guts weren't
Strung tight enough: loose
Strings and broken bows;
Resonating chambers cracked
And in the cracks no greening.


Note:

1--This poem is by no means intended as a critique of Mackey's poems, which I love.


Brilliant Black

The Blackstone Rangers revitalized.

"Nigger can you kill?"

Narcissus
Flowers
Along the freeway
Where people go
To smoke crack.

Take that back
Quack the didactic.

I don't dig the word nigger
But adore the word hick.

"Nigger can you kill" strikes me as
Niki G's best poem.

Poems should often be bigger
Than their authors aside my fact
Authors should implicate themselves.

Note:

1--I'm pretty sure "Nigger can you kill" is not the actual title of the poem beginning with that line.



Public Space

With my clock and my rock
I go into public space.

With my face and my farce
I articulate soul
Feet and feet and feet trample

And for
Example
Sometimes

It's baby-boy's blood
Splatters his sister
Who like the anorexic she is
Can abstain from A to Z
But cannot resist
Feeling this is fucked up.


The Dozens At A Corner

Graffiti on
Facades.

Barred windows.

Rents like
You
So knowing
Would believe.

Blown petals
Of a thrown bouquet:
It should always
Look so pretty when
Someone says I'm throwing
Your stinking love away.

From afar
Or forty blocks
A carpet-trimming a-fray
Looking for all
The world like brocade

Has been blown onto a rotting bench
Where JFK once sat.


Currently Untitled

In much
American

Poetry
There is

Not enough
Explicitly

Protected
Sex.

I bend bow and
We limbo;
A we bow whack;
A we bow
Whack; a we; a bow.

True and
Truly
Unsatisfying

The way the
Answer
Always
Depends.

Inviolate
Of verve
Has the nerve

To tell me
My momma
Stinks the stank
Of the rose whose
Freshness is never spent.
That cocksucking motherfucker!

It's funny
As in Biographia Literaria
That when I try and
Wrote an unhyphenated cock-sucking
My software
Wothout my consent
Substitutes crosskicking
And yet
Motherfucker
Goes un
Red or green lined as
If it's correct.



Because One Can Be Careful With Desire

His big beautiful dick
Its archaic
Splendor slick as
I lick the
Luster
Enhanced by
The condom
Like as one looks
At their reflection in dewy rockface;
Oh those
Creepers
Are beautiful: I love
The cinnamon-colored speckles
Around the stamens.