day after 34

yesterday was largely spent riding old highways in the George, and latter reading Kafka while Penelope danced in sunshine.
before the sun slipped I put an old stove-top-wok on the sidewalk & lit a hot fir fire inside. after stacking chairs around, a bunch of neighbors came by and drank and smoked together. therein are more than three of my favorite things. 

to be had

sleeping and not sleeping are both different when had at the end of county roads. this kind of quiet, framed by birdsong, softened tin roof tapping, allowing insects to sing out, is the best damn quiet necessary. when I was a younger person I slept with my window open most of a year round I could manage, letting in the kind of quiet that happens in the absence of people. the silence and sound of all of the living life that goes on while we intake to industry and sirens. I miss this. 

1981-2015:

as a young growing in rural North Idaho (the ever cold and snowy north) there were as many potential friends as leaves on the flag of our northern neighbours. 

extroverts learned quick-step to any warm corpus, their binary polar reminded that the forest was the place for breathing. 

became season creatures, became alice in dead ways that wrinkled out skin, uncooked. 

running mountains to top out lost, thirteen years of age ago, without fear of coming home for supper. burning things made in coffee makers from chemistry classes we could never pass. 

power in a crochet head scarve. taller and more willing to touch the place my bathing suit covers than another relative or any - - one alive.  

distance gave me a reason to create it, nighttime handed me a love story for beautiful = with-difference. 

these dances ultimately took off their clothes and lied side by side. 

the inclusion survey on policy.

space blanket sleep. 

power

alone

adaptation

strode

close 

when holding still becomes movement

recall the hands that caught a body as it fell in the well
the discussions they had, and too finger printed

monochromatic dresses tell the world that they mean business, pleasure, sorrow, wagon wheels, & sometimes feelings like hate
in most of those minutes - we - build a space in our homes for holding one another
i/we/you construct a thing, utilize it far beyond intention, and entirely negate it the following whatever
the same schism in our bodies somehow looks like ways to squeeze out comfort, and is immediately broken down for recycling
if schisms, built spaces, mouths, love or house-holds were ajar without owners they may fill up with bits of others
spaces expand when the dress is on a floor or a body

in through the nose, out through the mouth, every piece as anthropocentric as this thought & those prior  
the past of wrapping finger prints around things and making them our own, occurs as often as we admit the answer to our existence
from the shoulders of morose giants, shout inquiry, shield an impact, create a list of followers & the litigations therein
distant din of cages closing, reminding us all of love and that we are also animals in these same pages we are described as - their - creators

i have water that dunks my head and allows the baby to be named Cathartic, questioning its -will-
shortly after a screen appears, allowing for the answers, removing the marrow aching tabula rasa
back to shoulders & hips & lips all spilled more breath into things and never poked at where those came or where wind will end
to draw our graphs as circles, weighted in place but not without connection, draw a bath, draw form a snapshot memory
time capsules may not hold fingerprints to the narrative we care to uncover

proof from under the nails, skeletal without withholding, prints long fallen away
a pillar named Catharsis,  supine naked by an empty altar, in all the ways empty can be  

fork it

there is a smell
and i can't smell it, or i can. but i live here, so i have no way of knowing.
the 4k lbs flower on my shoulders looks lovely, and maintains the roads int eh winter so we all can arrive on time.
the knees of these roads are buckling under the salts of Gibraltar, and we stare at the beer signs in the corner and wonder why that smudge never comes clean.
i remember when i learned to spell recall, and was rewarded with a can of lysol and a scrub brush.
more rusty metal in those back yards than a Nash Rambler in 2013, hallways packed with 4k lbs flowers, packed with tape.
as we begin to learn the distinction between words that make similar sounds and shapes we are rewarded with cuts on our elbows, and our first taste of real plumbs form a tree.
some way we thought these things therapeutic, only to retrieve them pedantic, patronizing, and at least a little maze bound.  
we gave our hands over to the past that we write that day, with those droves of fire ants, surplus bags, gumshoes on the concrete, and a buss ticket to some place free of ore.
thanks for the reminder.
black coffee.

s*pace*

Jen doesn't like it when the maids leave any lights on after they have left.
it makes her feel as if someone is there, or as if she can not be certain of the contrary.

she also has her doubts about this new cellular phone, and car.
they could be smaller and more personalized.

she certainly prefers a room cold to warm, and a weekend full to empty.
Jen is an adult, after all.

YOU slow down!

that moment you can no longer find any info about your old band, and there is some other band by a strikingly similar name. that's a squishy one.

time to keep wishing there was time to play music again!

hella lame

negativity. or, with a twist of erudition, call it hyper-critical-thinking.
it' simple.
it takes far less effort than finding positive.
as a good friend called it -> focusing on what is wrong and broken, rather than what is right an worth mending.
& what's more, it does not require you to attach yourself.
if you are only ever on the minus, no one will ever suspect you of actually caring for anything.
you will never have to stick up nor back fill.
you will rarely be challenged, because you simply dislike or are not enticed by.
yup, itsa sickness.
over and over again, this year and that, you try to shake it.
time to find the positive first, you will say.
i just don't want to be so predictable. so cloudy. so negative.
then it creeps back in, like a New Year's Eve drinking resolution.
one glass on the weekend...then the remainder of the bottle.
support groups? naw. there is little cohesion in the clouds.
maybe a role model?
i want to be more like_________
i most certainly do not want to be like_______
it's undoubtedly a fight worth fighting.
beating back the clouds.
mending and righting.    

Q - cubed, or something mathematical.

Q is the space between entering a room, and the realization that it is not invited-
the still confused, expectant little bird-
a brimming second glass of wine
Q is crescendo prior to piano-
a warmth remembered deeper and more visceral than others-
a tent in any forest
Q might pop in at the most uninvited and quiet of moments
amid symphony chorus, a choir clap
whilst everyone is pretending their hardest to be a writer
Q is a variable in a statistical analysis
solved for by children's laughter
separated by an integer greater than 1/3 of a lifetime
Q can only be what it is, and severely never impostor-
through its servitude to impunity, it is excluded from a waining gibbous-
only ever full moon
Q is drawn out by friends when it can
savored by the light of candles and cop cars
held open by irony and recollection, like a door for elderly admittance
Q is romantically, emphatically, unequivocally, the amount of time i/we should smile vs. how often i/we do.
it's me/us at the top of something I/we have not seen since I/we was/were a child/children, too short to reach up there, and ostensibly too young to care

The Geography of Bliss

"Cafes are theaters where the customer is both audience and performer."
~Eric Weiner

all these things are living & not bound by punctuation

her folks named her caribou after the country they longed to wrap themselves in

 pining for any place that requires each other for warmth

born bluer than the earth from a pub's window view on Jupiter, she fought hard for this one 

 said, "ride slowly there are children playin'

right there past the dog that's weary"

 waiting beside a bowl to dine or die

i can not tell if her father passed, or if her lover left and made her cry

 could it have been a past acquaintance kept lit by her young heart's light

all i know for sure is someone should hug her real hard

breathing threw it, the way ancestors had

 the way all animals do

chemical free and bound by possibility 

 leather in the mouth tastes like bark in the hand

if her eyes don't burst, her throat just may

 hands available, this one will fight back hard

in a space that fills the definition of watching and being watched at once

 we all sit and speculate

even caribou knows she doesn't know for sure

 her adjacent friend's empty mouth, brain, tea cup

liquids her past people drank with a variety of dinosaur 

 all i know for sure is caribou is stronger than any one in the joint 

& it's not for a career that holds her from feeling 

 she has been fortunate/unfortunate enough 

to live by the blood or brass ingested

 if that adds to comfort, well it's not in a scuffle with every other day

caribou; a picture of what each of us remembers 

 and the leather we will taste again some day soon 

arrived: the forlorn blossoms of an eggshell

well, we've done it sir.
you and me, and certainly I, have managed to become something no one else would like to be.
be it literal or otherwise, this place is all our own.
we fought so hard for the things we began to believe in our youth, and rejected any alternative.
struggles to free those we have never met from the chains our flighty privilege could see. accept nothing but absolute equality on all fronts. abhorrent equality. confront capitalism in every minutia impossible. bark at the moon while we pray to her in our mind. & potentially estrange one another. odious ideologies that we know can smell like the only answer.
and i am now drunk enough to start rocking to and fro. where is that conviction going?
and this is now the mint green walls of your past musings. dinner plates.
nor is it the drab grey walls. now that line our state's capital.
histories written on narratives we read in classes we never would attend.
i am what you are afraid of. a punk with a motive.
fought so hard we can't even admit we are only talking to ourselves. or am i? you, likely, have moved on from this long ago.
Oh, you've got green eyes
Oh, you've got blue eyes
Oh, you've got grey eyes

gibran kahlil gibran's: dogeared & stapeled

once annually she fights in the face of peace and tranquility to stand up straight and pretend
a beautiful theatric, likened to frying food sounds we all know as if they were our own skin
this battle with the sky, the walls, every old waxy record, and any still living plant
and knowing that others didn't bother, well that certainly will not make her stronger
she is not Catholic, nor any other form of deep ground guilt nor shame
like a Tuesday off from work, she does not see where there would be time

the great contributors to our revolution are those who created these "money on trees theories"
see the devil bleeding in a ditch, every Christian rushing frantically to save the soul of their fallen angel
without someone lying on top she would never be certain that there is a chance she. will. never. get. up.
muscle enough to break her own bones, fortitude is never what she needs

& it's so simple to peer back through the tunnel, before the ceiling dust fell from off her shoulders
that dust will never come clean of her clothes, and to cast them off, so stains pores and pillars
for others, that was the birth canal, otherwise known as their mother: leading from the uterus through the cervix, vagina, and vulva.
no one can see her dust, it is hers to breath

from the ditch she has a lovely view of all the answers to all of the questions that held her in dichotomy 
the sky, the walls, very old waxy records, botany and the like. 
what that means to her is the great western seagull defecating on a bronze bust of everything she ever believed in
she is the gray cloudy walls that wreak of unplayed vinyl and eucalyptus
the dust from from the ceiling is keep care of her
sunlight is the christian in her bleeding ribs   

chrome was once a plastic-some-place

when we awaken to exclaim "today..." what we more-so mean is what's left over.
see, a few years back there was a car down the block that folks slept overnight in regularly.
that car was painted with the wheels and tyres intact.
now, who could say what's become of it.
conceived a few children & possibly a nutrea nest & the usual needle holster & then ten paperbacks from the nearest free-box fantasy.
it made these things.
form the warmest heart of Mexico, & a never sleepy Malaysian capital from whence it came.
those windows held reflections of a visage. a fuselage for sale. again.
the thorax of this thing weeps as well as its midnight song that evening. in the wind. under their bodies.
the sleepy "heart and soul" an artifact of culture that gives it as much as any semaphore under capital statue shadows.
& it is not the ephemeral nature of the thing that makes it ring. that is not the case for any thing these-days.
it's the shine that both knobs of an aged radio could give you, when "something to look at" meant as much to you as hose needles & that baby & rodent resting & discarded novels & Mexico & every square centimeter of Kuala Lumpur.  
& perhaps more.  

Honsetly the way it rains here when it rains makes Portland look like pre school. 
I have never seen so huge rain drops.
                                       ~Johanness Fluvio Weber on Paris downpour

thirty something nothing

on the way home, still frantically tearing off articles of colorless clothing, we decided to go to the place our friend last said "I love it here".
leaves and years cover the footprints we had secretly hoped to locate. and somehow the smells we thought to recall. & somehow we still think about all of those missing bits, possibly more in their absence.
white glints in the water of salmon carcass from this past spring. why have they not been masticated by water or a mouth? why are those the things that managed to stick around. all we wanted was a lousy bottle cap. on the way back to the car you unearthed some red birthday balloon shrapnel.
we found ourselves closer to the sky than we planned and took a slow drive back where we came from.
on the drive we used the "slow moving vehicles lane" as often as possible. people in colorless clothing have no business in cars. particularly no fast ones. and we can not be bothered to adjust to our chromatic thinking selves.
once home we ate everything worth its sugar from the cooler and called it a night. sand still in our shoes, colorless clothes piled high, tears on our sleeves, and some dusty red balloon shrapnel.  

la playa

she wrote: most lakes have a similar shape, when viewed from the shore or center. & maybe that's a little too vague but illustrates the odds that stack and hinder. & the way she looks deep into the water's slow fade, to see one more branch to sunken log. that's not palm frond or sun beam, it's dust in the water.

memo poem mepo

once you lived in Lisbon

so much more than just a summer

built pyramids of pleasures past, and those that did say never

faster, faster, faster cried the waning wake and tether

indicative of folks who study lives and loves of others

& it's not that I keep doing this

over and over

it's that i'm not doing that

over and over

never subverted

over and over

simply not mentioned

i used to be Algerian, from far external texts

stood in the arms of an ocean deeper than what we see here

worked hard for these marks, and never surrender

scathed from bow to stern, & recalling we both were

& the background sounds bleed bigger, awaiting recognition

all our backs bow thicker, stood on by some past conviction

interlocking fingers, as if conscience was cohesive

not building fortress around, rather lush gardens within them

never sure why so sure

somehow you write with so much hope. without a one of your three children. with the faith of a thousand churchless workers. so it's back to Spokane you are, or Georgia, or some place north. there is often someone to help somewhere: possibly a relative, family friend, former forensics. you hold the vial and gloves to cleanse your new life of any connections to its reflection. you know as well as the department of humyn services that they would wait there for you at the hospital, and after birth hand you both back. you to the street, and your letter-named kind to the system that can afford neither sugar nor parking spaces. this is an industry, but no one tells you about anything but you. we also forget that every one of us nearly put ourselves in your bedless. and you wake to the sunshine, some place not so far from a ship's deck, no higher than an apogee. i will practice the piano so we can celebrate, once was a standard to laugh with blood in your fists.

some days ago

i like the way people hold on to things.
not with their hearts, but with their hands.
it's interestingly unique, similar to how we can or can not roll our tongues, wink and blink, or draw realistic trees.
things we believe may have been passed down? maybe not.
i think i would tell you about that.