Watch a Tamarind Leaf Move

Watch a tamarind leaf move diurnally
and a vigilante octopus’ skin will be squid-like.
Thermal and chewy. Foam.
He’s contingent upon tentacles
measured in units of elephant ribs
which once lived in a sack of skin—
a type one might classify as human palm-like
sewn loosely and a smile leaking ink
where otherwise a tusk might be.

“Does the leaf belong to the tree or the day?” asks the vigilante.
“Who owns patience of this species?”

“If the tree belongs to the ocean,” the octopus says,
“my suctions might claim
its tangly skeletal branches
belonging once to a bag of leaves alive
the kind you might find in a pile
or blown by machinery
or fluff for body bag. Pillow-stuffing.
And when the black bags sit all in a row
they are pod-like. Boasting eager seeds
whose meat might be sour, but sugary.”

I AM THAT

The seeker is he who is in search of himself.

Give up all questions except one: 'Who am I?'
After all, the only fact you are sure of is that you are.
The 'I am' is certain. The 'I am this' is not.
Struggle to find out what you are in reality.

To know what you are, you must first investigate
and know what you are not.

Discover all that you are not--
body, feelings, thoughts, time, space, this or that--
nothing, concrete or abstract, which you perceive can be you.
The very act of perceiving shows that you are not what you perceive.

The clearer you understand that on the level of mind you can be described in negative terms only, the quicker will you come to the end of your search and realize that you are the limitless being.

Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Cessation

When in the wind what water sway’d to rise
And children skip’d flat stones along the bank
We steep submerged and laps flip capsize
Our vessel and ripple pools echo sank
We hold our breaths—free-drown a little deeper
Algae suspends like dust around us. Our limbs
Disturb with every thrust: creatures, creepers,
And our thoughts—tokens of our lust and whims
Inept to bottle inspiration
We buoy to the top—surrender to
A dead man’s float and on the shore we shun
All movement. We have worn unto
A restless mind yet one must abide
The lake stops—reveals below and sky

This Is The Very Field Where I Imagine a Good Death To Be

Orofino, means fine gold
And a good place to be born
In the night under northern lights
At the crux of four colors
Black white red yellow
Within hairs to a pillar
During a moon when the calves grow hair
To when the plums grow scarlet
A blue silo indicates that pines whisper here
That farm cats and dairy cows roam side by side
With dark apples
In their eyes
And yes,
Their tongues trough
And field
Rough
Openly
I am not shy
While shoveling
Regions of the yard
Where vast daffodils were
Underappreciated by mother,
But due to pity
Still made it to a drinking jar on the sill,
Where it wilted in all whiteness bled.
Oblivious to parachutes,
Knowing well the fateful grip of a four-year-old’s
Peanut butter and pinesap fingers

Even the grasshoppers could not escape
Feeling around the creases of a warm
Frond—a darkness we fashioned
Like a mini train car from a tobacco tin.
Perforated from nail punches
They kicked around
I see inside—
Kidnap!
In hopes of trout. Rainbows
Of them. All we caught were crawdads
I took one.
Down the mountain grade
And 13 hours west
Exhibit A in a bowl,
Where he chewed his leg off
Under magnification
After every failed effort to escape.
Grandpa found him on his way out
The crustacean dragging the baggage of his body
To the nearest exit—
The front door teasing
His limbs
I know this now
Someone should have stopped me
From saving him

Cities & Impossibilities

In the city of Fabiola, the armature alternately dissolves and integrates. Its light evaporates as a rope soaks up kerosene to burn within the lamp's bulbous chimney glass. It brightens with the food of more rope.
The sky is a blueprint that dangles contrails. They seamlessly disintegrate into the solid blue that masks the stars. The funeral pyres remain for mulch. No cars run off the pipeline. Can't you see? Not through the particulate matter, like that which covers the nightness.
In this particular matter, in the township of Fabs, light switches remain a mystery--dissociated from their antiquated uses. Historians and archaeologists sit around the conversation pit; drinking hot clover madhu; playing with "Scrabble" tiles on a "Monopoly" board. None of the original intentions or rules that govern, like that of the light switch, were retained, recorded, or deciphered. The principal spirit or goal, however, has been preserved: to play a game. As long as these professionals have something on the table with which they could occupy their eyes and many dexterous fingers while employing the muscles attached to their fine lips, then they could keep the criticism of outsiders at bay for a time. After all, there are no other inhabitants of Fabiola, who express any expertise on the origins of monopoly, much less the meaning of scrabble letters with numbers on them. Some have a faint notion that they might pertain to something called the "Periodic Table." But periods, whether related to time and punctuation, or elements and chemistry, are generally beyond the concerns of common folk. They would rather enforce their faith that the conversation pit figures are engaged in crafting important plans for Fabiola's future. Perhaps literacy and cultivation practices will be taught or ways to detect mines in the "no-colonization field."
Fabiola is rich. She lacks a lot of the elements typical to a traditional city. Most notably, she lacks hatred. Her inhabitants know neither the meaning of this word, nor the implications it has in alternate dimensions. For the reader, examples might include: rape, diseased blankets, starvation of nutrients, decimation of species, and ego hunger. Due to the absence of hate, there is also little comprehension of fear. Many outsiders might accuse this township to be of little consequence--accomplishing nothing. On the contrary, they manage to maintain healthy levels of body heat, fat, and water.
They survive on little food and darkness. Their chief nutrients hail from clean air and stillness. They use and revere their legs so highly that artisans sculpted and dedicated public sites to pieces of substantial and muscularly articulated columns of legs. One popular site is located at the center of the town square where the townsfolk surround the celebrated appendages and dance before sunrise every morning. Then they stretch out on the cobblestones to roll around massaging their fleshy and fabulously-used proteins. Shortly after, they soak their feet in a nearby stream and gaze at the continuous morphing of their faces reflected. The deeper they peer, the more rocks appear and the sense of cold and wet passes and charges the electricity of their skins. Thus, forgetting all about their limbs.

Because of Words

Without poets to connect
The consideration of the mind
With the backbones of the dead
We should be two earths
Rather than the sun and its reflection.
The dirt.

The dead are one earth
And the mind is another—
The same, but somewhat intemperate
And more muddled and premature
The separation lessened
At birth.

There’s a spark of the Devil
On the paper below the pen
No moral is intended. Even prone
To dispossess, the language of larks
Into lit protest, and the words
Are broke.

The costume of a corpse buttoned
By the burial in a figure of speech
Destroys not our work
Nor muffles the bell of thought
But the moment of final exhalation to its mute hour
Is rotten.

Flesh is the soul of sound
And breath is the evaporation of indifference
But writing words like facetious and abstemious
Decorates the atmosphere of every vow well
We turn the phrases
And tread.

Wherefore by the bright face
Of each key and point we drain
Our thoughts together with our mutations
In a spectral shower
We rest between expense and expanse
And live.

only the fog is real

My mind on this beat
Steps
on another beat
When
I see my mind
Step on this beat
When
Only the clock hangs

from the scruffy orange cat to a second-degree murderer

I have disrupted
your prison
culture and revel
in your attention

you were probably
saving
to keep your head
down
and mind your own
business

Forgive me
the bowls of milk
behind the dumpster
were delicious
and the fur trim
of my matted
burred coat
liberating

Cooking Up String Beans & Squash Flowers, Circus School & Madame Blavatsky

1. Read with a clean conscience
2. After giving birth be sure the newborn did not sprout a tail.

Saturnino de Brito
& Lal Arifa
in any city square
any humid summer,
the best idea
go tumble by the Hudson
or go back
to her apartment
engender
undying animal
acts initiate
rumbling sky.
“Have you heard
of Madame Blavatsky?”
de Brito asked on
more than one occasion.
“Was she
not responsible
for bringing wicked power
to the nazis?” Lalla asked.
This conversation
they had before,
but this
a new development.
an exchange to move
the dust particles
doing what dust does
in the window-
filtered daylight.
De Brito’s reply
came out static
as a loud pair of Nikes
arrhythmic
clomped upstairs.
“Erishan!”
Erishan Tanaka
from the hall with a huff
emerges mauve steel
bicycle over her shoulder
like one of those guys
on the street
balancing buckets
or baskets from a single pole.
“’Sup.”
“Yosup Erishan!?
Ogenki desu ka”
de Brito said.
“Hey, Niner.
Comment ça va?”
“Ya wernt in classe today.
Just kiddeen
I wasn’t eether.”
(Something you can’t see.)
“Nah.
I’m straight.”
“Word.
Let’s match. Brother
Kenna came by last night.”
“Aw that fool? He got some
weird scar on his face from dat
tribal shit, right?”
“He’s from Mali.
His grandmother did that.
It’s an honor.”
“Damn.
That cat’s skinny.”
Lalla pulled out
a Pacific-centric world
map no less
than four feet wide and three feet tall
Unrolled it before De Brito
as though a sacred scroll
discovered down some alley
or on a lower
eastside sidewalk chillin’
in a free pile.
She weighted each corner
one shoe, one roll of packing tape,
a colored pencil box,
and a book of human
anatomy. I imagine
De Brito felt claustrophobic from looking
at all that
canned expanse. Once again
he saw blue
between them.
She pulled
a pair of black shoestrings—
with which she failed
to properly lace her kung fu
shoes—from her closet.
She placed
one aglet tip
at the cluster of Cabo
Verde (off the west
coast of Africa) and the other
at Aringay (on the west coast
of the Philippines).

“Same
latitude,” she says.

Island
people.

Yes and No

by Laura Riding

Across a continent imaginary
Because it cannot be discovered now
Upon this fully apprehended planet--
No more applicants considered,
Alas, alas--

Ran an animal unzoological,
Without a fate, without a fact,
Its private history intact
Against the travesty
Of an anatomy.

Not visible not invisible,
Removed by dayless night,
Did it ever fly its ground
Out of fancy into light,
Into space to replace
Its unwritable decease?

Ah, the minutes twinkle in and out
And in and out come and go
One by one, none by none,
What we know, what we don't know.

Read This With a Clean Conscience

Saturnino de Brito would sometimes meet Lal Arifa in any city square during humid summer days, somehow convincing her that the best idea at that moment was either to go tumbling by the Hudson or go back to her apartment and engender undying animal acts, which often initiated a rumble in the sky.
“Have you heard of Madame Blavatsky?” de Brito asked on more than one occasion.
“Was she not responsible for bringing some wicked power to the nazis?” Lalla asked. They had this conversation before, but they never brought up that fact. It was more like an exchange to move the dust particles floating in the window-filtered sun.
De Brito’s reply came out like static as a loud pair of Nikes arrhythmically clomped up the stairs. “What?—Erishan!”
Erishan Tanaka came through the hall with a huff and a mauve steel bicycle over her shoulder like one of those guys on the street balancing buckets or baskets from a single pole. Over her other shoulder hung a messenger bag with a double-bagged sack of groceries tied to it. “’Sup.”
“What’s up Erishan!? Ogenki desu ka” de Brito said partially in jest. Is that not how I interpret it though?
“Hey, what’s up Niner. Comment ça va?”
“Ya wernt in classe today. Just kiddeen I wasn’t eether.”
“What are you guys up to?”
“Nothing.” the two replied simultaneously.
“You guys wanna smoke?”
“Nah. I’m straight.”
“Word. Let’s match. Brother Kenna came by last night.”
“Aw that fool? He got some weird scar on his face from dat tribal shit, right?”
“He’s from Mali. His grandmother did that. It’s an honor for him.”
“Damn. That cat’s skinny.”
De Brito hailed from Cabo Verde, where he said many of the mothers would check their babies’ bottoms after giving birth to make sure that the newborn did not sprout a tail. I suppose it was a most common fear among Cape Verdean mothers, but second to knife attacks as those were more common.
After one of De Brito and Lalla’s late afternoon/early evening sessions, Lalla pulled out a Pacific-centric world map that was no less than four feet wide and three feet tall. She carefully unrolled it before De Brito as though it were a sacred scroll that she perhaps discovered serendipitously down some alley or on some lower eastside sidewalk chillin’ in some free pile. She weighted each corner with one shoe, one roll of packing tape, a colored pencil box, and a book of human anatomy. I imagine that De Brito felt claustrophobic from looking at all that canned expanse. Once again he saw oceans between them. She pulled a pair of black shoestrings—with which she failed to properly lace her kung fu shoes—from her closet. She placed one aglet tip at the cluster of Cabo Verde (off the west coast of Africa) and the other at Aringay (on the west coast of the Philippines). Island people.
“Look,” she said, “you came from the same latitude as me, ma cherie mon amour.” Actually, it was about a degree off with CV being at 15° 6′ 40″ N
and Aringay at 16°23'N.
“Of course, babe. But I grew up in Lyon,” he said.
In response, she took the other shoestring and placed one aglet in Lyon at 45° 46′ 1″ N and the other at 47° 36′ 35″ N in Seattle.
She said, “And that’s where I grew up.” While traveling abroad, she would write down responses from people she met when she told them, “Soy de Seattle.” Some of the common ones were:
“It rains a lot there, right?” or “The home of Nirvana!” or “Kurt Cobain!” or “Quello è da dove il Jimi Hendrix proviene” depending on generation and interest. Others would just go on what they saw in postcards and mention the Space Needle. It always surprised her, however, that no matter how widespread Starbucks became all over the world (sometimes claiming up to three stores on a single block) people would not know that Starbucks nació in Seattle.
“Oh tha’s dope tho,” Erishan said stepping into the doorway. “Ahm ‘bout to cook some rice tho.”
“Thas right!” de Brito said.
“You know that’s the only thing Bruce Lee ate with green tea.” (At least in the movies.)
“You love that guy,” De Brito said.
“Hell yeah! A composite of him and Tupac would make the bombest man,” Lalla replied, “Hey speaking of China—Shan, did you know Niner’s going to Beijing?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Ahm goin to circus school.”
“Dope.”
“I’ll make some saluyot, string beans, and squash flowers while y’all discuss the influence of Fritz the Cat, Madame Blavatsky, and Krishnamacharya on the state of the modern world,” Lalla said.
“You think too much,” de Brito said.