Tag: writers of wordpress

I’m taller than you expected,
yes?
I move the bottom of
my foot down
 your shoulder
and pieces of snow
drop all over your ear.
 you are level
with the dogs yellow
eye, or she has become
level with you.

I’m not here to help,
merely observe.
there are rules to this.
I watch you sink into
the sheath of Earth that begins
to crack beneath you.
I don’t know
if it is surrender
but it is prayer like,
or maybe it is irritation.
I’m here now and I
don’t know where to begin,
which trail to point to so
I just unfurl and
turn into the frozen
lake right there.

 

3.

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“what do you do when something loves
you? do you love it back?

I’m volatile.”

I’ve got nothing,
 I show him,
but notes like this;
each one parched out
later, gutted
by time travel,
tornado worship,
something called “the
myth becomes” and
I get nothing done.

 

they don’t believe me
but I amounted to nothing
and I show them
sweeping my hand over
an obscured history
but no real success
I laugh, undaunted
usually and also
breezy. I like smiling.
composition open
pointing to one sentence
I like watching time.

I’m obsessed with unproducing,
or burning a process as you
 watch it unfurl. it’s like
setting the bottom of each trunk
on slow fire and then you
climb to the top of
the pine watching it
engulf you then eviscerate
whatever you were.
I am up by dawn, or close
to it,  thinking this is what
 true love is doing
and I’ve done this before;
proving habit,
and the deep deep
null of feeling
that I really possess
daily, filled with
plotting and idle time,
a rumination of these
invidious encounters.
something always in my hand.
something always tinctured,
distilling and then
wanting you to see it:
my nullness and
overreaction and courting
 that must be
facade or instinct or
vexing but
mold it into something
better than the ice cold
well I am.
palms open in please.
that’s where people fall.
in the snow bank
in the bottom of the frozen
hole trying to help
the little
girl.

I think a lot,
I say softly.
and I like learning
 words.
point to one:

duplicity


“the act of naming things”

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to seek me, meant
pleasure in ineffability,
already a loss for words
and to remain hidden
from some parts of the depth
of me and from the world with
me; I prefer the furtive
curl against another.
the unutterable and silent
worship
drives this chasm
I keep deeper between us
and the others and
you and me
like rifts adrift
like that, the moment
I turn my head.
I like to live,
eat, sleep alone
and move the country
this way; home
 a solitary war
between impulse and
deep, deep reflection
upon impulse
 control.

I’m so sensitive
that if I settle into
think and spread
the cards like a fan,
I’d feel it out
in five seconds
eyes closed.
show me,
she said.
show me one year
show me two years
show me three years.

“King of Cups”

0

 

don’t you ever take away my joys,
my labor organizing or autonomy.
i’m speaking liberally,
predictive and
coded with demands.
I haven’t shaved in days,
developed musk and am
running fingers down my legs
to watch them in the mirror
creep like Daddy Longlegs.
calling ghosts, I say
but like a broken record
and starting with
don’t you take away
my joys, make me
deferential.
I’ll cut my hair clean off,
you’ll see

but there’s only three feet
between us and I’m leaning.
 wait for me
to throw my locks all over
your kitchen table.
rest my skinned skull
on your knee, Venus is
obsessed but well,
I begin to get up fast
 just as happily.
it always starts with a well.

walk by the little girl
in the well.
don’t fall down the well.
watch out for the well.

“the well” (for Pluto in my third house)

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I can go forever:
have been, have gone
without, truly starved.
no period of separation
or isolation
has scurried me along.
 suffering long episodes of
 devotion, then a swift
disaffiliation
from the practice,
whatever bondage I wear,
I wear loosely.
even the devil’s arms
don’t fit me
and I was molded intricately
and set to last,
a stone sarcophagus to contain her.
a product of thinking too much
 is obsession. 

 it is best if
 you have a moving target
or several
 so you don’t fixate on one tree
 for too long;
 inevitably,
 the squirrel running up
or the dog running beside
 will shake you.
today it is two robins
dancing in a pool of dust.
my eyes are adjusting to the
brightness of the bush behind
them, and the basketball hoop glinting
past that to the grass as they
kick up dirt.
 I think of all the signs I missed
in life. how many times I thought
the word God then a robin
would meet me,
or to be so uncertain of something
to have an opposum walk out
and stop you in your tracks.
it’s the perseverative ring
it is pertinent,
I am both feared
and adored.

i’m sitting on a park bench
 trying to prove I can do this
 having done this before.
 sitting for as long as I can
and I am also
watching the construction
men in front of my house.
from this angle, I can see them.
not wanting to walk by the  hole
or the giant crane. or exchange a
hello,
not wanting to be around them,
move past them again.
see how long I can do this.
watch them.
sit. I get up to move to a different
bench.
see how long I can wait for.
I am doing this for practice.
even if I have to get up and move
to another bench.
sit and move to another bench.
how long can I do it.

I am doing this for practice.
a park outside of my house
this whole
time.
grass,
unmuzzled terriers,
the nods and my inquisition
face wrapped in mask
so my mouth can rest a more
natural slack-jawed state
as I watch the two labradors
lick each other and give
the owner a wave.
I’ve always tucked my neck in
turtlenecks and coats.

I turn and look at the trucks
pulling forward. two large
open-bed ones for the concrete they
are ripping up. my entire
street unearthed
to relay pipes and
they are lining the inside with wooden
planks and I know they are
working through lunch
because I saw one
 grab their cooler and walk towards
my place and yesterday
they worked through lunch too.
not leaving. from seven am,
the chainsaw woke me,
to three when they bid their
toodle–oos to each other
and quite bellowing.
one even singing on and off
all day. 
I said on Tuesday
to the new moon and my altar,
an ace:
 I want this done as fast
as possible.

It is thursday.
they have not taken a lunch
since and
I’m gonna sit here and watch
them.

“the bench”

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information is power so
I ask the time and place
and day and I hold
back some ecstatic clapping
for the willfully delivered
 emblem that I now braid back
into me.
I feel most secure in holding
someone by their neck and
forward and possibly in
creeks of ice asking
are you pious, son?

but never believing,
I strum my chords at night,
fanatical.
once missing, now
draped in beads of
declamation, afloat.
I’m white like creeks of ice
you lay your head upon and
cough the yes, I am devout.
I become the pew for them.
I become the papacy.

you become the tether tight
laid across my city bench,
suddenly engrossed in rosary
again.
as I begin to watch the men
dig holes into my
ground like clocks to measure
the dagger of a willful
mind devoted to one outcome,
you press your hands into
the ice to feel water
rise up.

“the pupil”

0

sometime late January
you spent the night with a woman
watching the moon grow.
come take me in my own abattoir,
my thesaurus.
I unrolled my tongue
ready for our first kiss
 and out spilled
someone else’s lung.
how did these things
ever get here?
I wonder aloud.

I had created a dalliant
stockyard in my bed
 to occupy us:
red-hot,
full of other people.
you were outside in a corduroy jacket
counting her freckles
as I was slicing the outside of
someone’s arm
to crawl inside
for warmth.
wait for us to duel it out
 in the morning
biting the inside of my cheek
 to taste victory
 and she was on top of you,
crowning.
well.

well,
I had been waiting to show you
self immolation and I know
some fun phrases like
vous aimez l’intensité.
you had been waiting with kerosene
and some promises to hold
 my pretty ashes
hostage; replete
with scathe,
a few words.

“fidelity”

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about 1/2017

the ardor started at the turn of the year  and immediately. I had without any visible sign or warning that this would be the new circuitous trajectory, put my plans for being a student and a doting social worker on hold. I would become very deeply and fanatically obsessed with the occult. to be clear, spending  23 of 24 hours devoted to it and it’s worship, the bedevilment of trying to decode it.  the bondage of belief forcing myself to have one belief, just enough to witness the circle of thought, action and the sigils on the door. and to light them. the spoken things. the dreams. the thinking longingly  and lovingly about my master Lilith but also quite frightened of her. every night a tense unwinding. guarded.
crystals lining the entire apartment.
floating on epsom
but nervous.


that year was full of blizzards and I spent most of it outside, letting the wind chap my cheeks with her pointed slap. and reciting long verses of rhyme out loud. sometimes smirking but in a way that held me up, not as ostentatious but frantic and to tell others I should be mostly avoided. like a gate between us and them, my mouth loaded and sometimes open. I had begun to bite my tongue between my jaw to get it to stop moving so it poked out, forked and I would talk openly to myself and laugh. almost squeal. it was rare those days if I were sad. not at the turn of  the year. I became euphoric, I became energetic and mad. 


I felt the earthly parts of me receding, like general discernment, regularity,  good habits, water, rest, concern for appearance, friendship, chapstick, any intimacy with  another. I suddenly disappeared from all networks; even changing jobs in the middle of it and letting the lighter, flightier parts gain weight and hover on a darkness. I began to examine the motivations of the centipede that would  show up in some corners of my tub: observe it’s migration through the house, almost feeling spied on or mocked. but then almost feeling tender towards it. protective.


one of the first visions was of a pig slaughtered in front of my bookshelf.
I didn’t want to know. I made one agreement.  what they always say is to be humble, and to be careful what you say.
I will not see my death.
is the phrase I chose.
the dream I chose.
the rule I chose.

we make our own agreements before we walk into
the crypt.
        remind them to commit
I will commit.

you can tell me every secret
but you cannot tell me
the story of my last breath,
and when it begins,
two hands cover my
eyes and we commit.
they are enthusiastic
for vessel and agree
wholeheartedly that even
if they have to hide the
gutted life,
they would indeed
smell sweet like
carrots and I gallop.
I sing odes to them.
devote days to them.
I let the centipede
linger wherever she lands.
I don’t root for the cats.
I don’t remove them
from the tub either.

it didn’t feel
like sinking, it felt
like being pulled
down
the whirlpool.
breathing also,
cooing
sending cardinals
to lovers all
the way
just to remind them
there are sweet songs
and there are rules
to this. 

“the agreements”

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there is a peace in exposure
and a peace in silence.
and I still can’t discern
 where I fit completely.
sometimes i flit about town
 with my paper point tongue
 and become the trap for them.
other days I sit quietly
and rearrange my stones
to surround pieces of paper
with words scribbled
as a representation of a symptom
of superstition.

 

when people say they are superstitious,
they usually mean they
don’t walk under ladders
or keep broken mirrors,
or if you’re Russian,
put your purse or keys on
the table.
when I say I’m superstitious,
I mean that if I think
about something too long
it begins to grow legs
and walk out so I can
see it better.

I begin to line the doors
with salt and brick
dust. I begin to line the
tub with black tourmaline
and smoky quartz. I
begin to line the bed with
kitchen knives and then
I begin to chant the
names.

“1/1/2017”

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first, I was not born with
a lot of fear and it confuses
others to find I shake
constantly. not literally
shake but fidget and
have to twiddle at all times.
this is
a tic. a tic is
characterized by involuntary
movement; a repercussion of
some hidden mechanism
to cope, neurological or, sincerely,
born from nothing
but exists within a person
regardless.
second,
I once saw the death of a man
I loved, but the face was blurry.
I just had a vision,
sharp, flash,
watching him fall through
a hole in a patch of ice
and disappear forever.
this was before.
before I knew who led who
across the lake.
before I could pull apart
threads and follow
them home.
before I could name things,
or rather, before
I could commit.
I won’t name the
color of his eyes
or hair. and I won’t tell
you anymore than
years ago,
 a friend dubbed me a title and
told me that I
give until I am robbed
and can give no more.

I did not know this man yet.

the year is 2016,
but the very end,
December and this is before
the dream of the cabin,
and the letters to,
let’s say “A”
and do the naming of them
alphabetically by chronological order
so as not to confuse anyone.
this was when  the unfurling began:
 every device I had for protection,
dissolving like the bounds
between, I can only say,
us and them.
this is before I knew that
this period of time
would bare great significance in
my development so I took
it too lightly. oh sure i enjoyed the
laughing and pacing and watching
my face melt into the mirror,
standing under streetlights for minutes
waiting for them to burst,
the three hour marches through snow
muttering, I just wish my notes
were neater, like it would all come
back now when he pressed
“record.” funny how
blackouts work.  I began a slow
fall into what textbooks
have described as
“a sustained mild
manic psychotic episode”
or possibly,
“a sustained dissociative fugue (of sorts)”
“spontaneous psychosis nos (trigger not known)”
                   the election of Donald trump
and what others say is
a
“kundalini awakening,
but rushed” as in
my crown burst open and
a snake jumped out
before I could process opening
my throat.
what others say is a
“nervous breakdown
from the pressure of grad school,
a demanding low paying job, and too
much time volunteering in harsh
climate or communities” or
a “sustained fantasy life
come to life via magic”
a “witch learning her craft”
a “possession by demons”
a “possession by ghosts”
a “possession of angels”
a “woman deemed saint by past sainthood”
a “possession by various channels”
an “alien abduction come back”
an “electronics gaining sentience
and communicating via music
via Spotify”
a “active fantasy life enlivened
due to self induce isolation”
a “nightly visitation”

I say
be careful what you
say.  

“switched places”

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