“All conditioning aims at that: making people like their social destiny.”

-Aldous Huxley A Brave New World

Small Fingertips

like knitting needles pick through tangled wire

Awaken something untouchable

paper-fine and not human

Let us touch, but feel less

The tactile sense is not to excite the flesh,

but the circuitry of distraction unconscionable.

Our words dwell in flatlands

compressed like animal organs

caked in fur on a dark highway

no perpetrator in sight,

but if you dig deepest you will reach the other side of Earth

Soundless yet buzzing efficiently

high speeds and all thoughts thinkable.

It’s not romantic.

It’s not even sweet and silver,

but sweat, order, labor, factor and quota.

Santa’s little helpers

binge and splurge

ad nauseum.

The vertigo workers climb bell towers

to sight the mausoleum

Direction embedded

The program enlisted

Small fingertips tap minutes

into a punch card into a product

which is the brain.

2.4.12

I lost that element long ago, 
Last night I jested 
about "big brother" friends. 
I learn to roll with the boys
In a fluctuating funk and Friday 
night stretches into Saturday 
My mind scatters like 2" x 3" flimsy papers all 
over the floor and counter.
I wore knee highs today 
my brittle nails seemed 
to tell me so. What can give.

If you were a Hokusai

If you were a Hokusai, which would you be?
I have done the rounds for my seven-year cycle,
which I have never heard of
Only tonight I go out to dance, but cannot.
Caught in a lens that only I see    
My only sense is a chamomile cloud
My only life is hourly
My house too small for thought
Too big for humility
These minutes too significant to forget
what bright falling leaves we are  

11.22.11/2.4.12

I will leave my children
A body of my life's work:
An empty tarnished chalice and the contents therein
A brief explanation of how we find irony timeless.  

Tonight we burn paper
And who we were 15 days ago
What remains is what we quest to be: Fire and ash  

11.9.11

Simple Twilight

Our white dresses show through

the simple twilight

Darkness perforated

Father is a fragment

a fractal of religion,

and a lesson unfolding.

He’s fallen into

the only thing we talk about.

The practical things fall

victim to absurdity

and why care much

about the faint faces

on the window of a night train. 

You scream delicious

with bags of decadence

dripping a condition of resident nectar.

Someone mingled with high air might understand

the pastiche quilt of sameness—

like midwestern visions of the land

without a pony

a project of honesty upon accessory—

an endless reference, controlling comets

And you are another

gentle singular, solo facsimile

wrapped in a blue tarpaulin, undying ocean.

You suffocate in shine, miss a smile,

creased in the horizon at a sunrise-silhouetted bridge

a generous view, a stately reply

a drawn growth, mapped network of marrow and steel

suspended by seed and steam. I was wasted on me

contrived of brick. A sequined eye on the sail of astonished clouds

unable to blink a mistake. 

Lastly, a Limitation

Soft concentration
thunders inside
siren metal tinkle

i thought lovely
the Goddess of Speech
broken conflict at risk

i insist on a single
weather balloon
satellite lost we--
abandoned thick floatation
expanding outside
stratosphering wicker echo

i thought heavenly
seven times once
an owl echoing in the wood
twice dragon eyes
three imaginary boys
four and so forth

we garden pentacles
with cups of buckles shekels
of safety oil and wheat in the night
now nine and spins a tempest
an endless twisted
exhale into evolutionary faith
a sword of choice and fate will fasten  

Eighty-Sixed

Year of the Rabbit
rains without repair.
He wears a red jumper
and plays soccer over the river.

With a splash, I see a flash
of past on the dusty hare.
Children play cards in the black grass
A concrete impression survives the blast
Centuries swell
a countenance rare.

Near Earth Trojan

A pocket nova sits in a brilliant belt of emptiness
I need a lighthouse barometer to open that window
we mine colors from asteroids
carbon kisses, stone blossoms, iron strings, threaded water and symbol
a bright chalice of clouds circle ivy-like
and frame this story like a cube of cold becoming why 

Fold Here

Dig us
out of ourselves
Holes and hills
He and she

Karen, Kyle and Kennedy
Happen to be here one day
Happen to dig
Their bodies from hive wax
And shale cracks

I was alcohol once
I was clear

Ready Means Happy

Telling darling
please sincere
comic
seams to join
a glimpse
tales of a fetish near
arrested
incantation
ready for surreal
the struggle in a closet
time it will reveal

The Future is Space

We are on a white island born from mountains that emerged from the ocean floor and frozen slightly.
We drive to high places in cars that are never really cars; they are more like skateboards.
The snow is so high that I feel it on my chest. People have pitched their tents where it was infinitely arresting--endless sky and horizon. I could spend the rest of my life here.

So many people, whom I do not know, populate this place and they are my kin--white and brown. Something is happening--a build up of years, of scars culminating on this snow-settled tropical island.

In the late afternoon, I sit in my home which is a rundown trailer situation. Bits of wall and siding fall, but I have no shame in my poverty. It is only shelter. A couple appears. I do not know the man, but A redheaded woman accompanies him. She has been dead for some time. She is very friendly and wants to spend time with me because she regrets that she didn't when she was alive and I do too.

I call for my cousin because I do not want to miss the daylight and he arrives in two seconds. I am shocked at how impossible, yet absolute everything is and happens. I am unprepared for this. In the car, halfway down the snowy road, I jump out and slide down the snow in my slippers which continue to fall off without any cinderella grace.

I watch a sea of my family on an infinite horizon. They emerge from the doors of a church. My mother and her sister guide the mourning mass. I watch them head-on as they approach me.

Giving Thanks: A Eulogy for Lola (Grandma)

Mid-autumn I rise to the sound of wind in the maples. From what I believe to be my secure shelter, I look out the window to see that the leaves have changed. From flames of deep orange to faded marigold, sunlit foliage fills my room with a glow that protects me from the cold open sky.

But even in glory, our old companions fall.  Some beauty returns to the earth that has provided us with every need, like a selfless mother.  And as we endure the daily hustle and bustle, perpetually acting, making plans, making mistakes, and making amends; we occasionally, sometimes unexpectedly, bear witness to this cycle of change--the vibrance of a luminous sunset to the subtlety of dusk to dark. The tree becomes barren, exposed for us to see, yet restful and at peace with the dramas of the world. And even though our tree has lost a part of itself, in time and with patience, the leaves of the past nourish its roots and make space for new eager buds, preparing for splendor.

We are the tree that remains, so let us be watchful over this beautiful family and the bounty of life that sustains us.  As the winter comes quietly upon us, we can pray or we can meditate. We can regretfully think on all the things we did or did not say or do.  But the best thing we can do in the absence of Lola is to contribute to life on her behalf.  When we devote ourselves to selfless kindness, forgiveness, and compassion, her spirit lives freely among us.

When a Person Becomes a Place

Everyone must have a pocket this deep
Sewn tightly in each corner
Let me know this one by heart
Incise surrender
No crime so sparse

I paint my grandfather
To remember a pinhole
In his forehead

Profound ovals
Upheld by his jaw
I never knew him without wrinkles
Nor the name of his Spanish piano songs

I'll name one Paradiso
Unlike infernos
Drawn in the woodstove during blackouts
Caves in mind

Never full
Shells concave his face
Where barnacles and cancer
Evolve for his fingers landing the keys
Blank and sharp

Single is Nothing

We pause to see radical change
Endorse it every town we tinsel
A branch where math is sacred

Single is nothing
We hang on

Our ligaments
Wish we thought better
Organic chemistry, quantum physics, astrophysics and neuroscience
Permacultural meditation, galactic alignment
Salmon eggs and skeletons mantra
Hawks, bats, hummingbirds, and manta rays

Fictitious realms and societies
Unseen abstractions laughing

Cryptic illustration of all things combined
A whole body together

Subconscious interaction
Clairvoyance and intuition
Star power and amethyst rocks
Heart tremors

Slipping vessels aboard the solution--saline circulation
What does the hand mean, who do I signify?

A cellular chapel, a chapter unwritten
And what do you feel about death?

And how can you inhale this life without exhaling
How could we think without salt and light

Without clear and dark voyages and voyeurism
A radiant teaching embodied and broadcast

From an island where the sunflowers turn
To the child of the sun

Play peek-a-boo like cats and tomatoes
The nightshade purples and resonates from paragliders

Diaphragmatic flight surrenders to wind and creation--
an echo so shallow and hollow--

Unaware of this frequency of sails and photons
We pause on the road to see a mesa and a man-made lake
All insects prehistoric
and where words don't work

Crazy Glue

We were surrounded by crazy glue

Surrounded by tools

We had the antidote for snake venom

and spilled all that too

My brother dangled from a rosary

fell far from a bead

The break echoed for decades

Slipped the rosary into grandma’s pillowcase

She never prayed again

He once was a manta ray

Once was a kite

He laid the sticks crosswise
Jumping in kid shoes

I snapped them apart

I can’t find them in the wilderness

Can’t squeeze their stubborn honey

That sleeps in crevices

Wings folded

The colored corollas too timid to help

What if they knew
he lives in a rock

the size of two palms

painted red butterfly?

What if they knew 

it could speak?

I leave them all spinning

I look for rainbuckets

I look for letter magnets

I look for windows taller than me

I was hypothetical then

Not a real dream

I was a shard of lamp glass

He broke for me

I bottled his swings

I smothered his voices

I asked him to shine

We were surrounded 

Surrounded by fools

We made dandelion sun tea

and spilled all that too

What am I?

I am a robber, a victim, a thief—I am kind remorseful, unburdened, relieved. I am thick as black and clear as forgotten sleep. I am stung. I am still here, still where I was, still looking to be somewhere else. I am fieldless, mountainless, lakeless, in love.  I tremble. I am a jackhammer. I am exhaust. I am raw, unrefined, unfiltered, unholy and I am whole.  I am restless. I am a rooftop—imperfect and boiled softer by the sun.  I am earth heat. I am basalt. I am volcanic. I am ash. I am fertile, sandy loam. I am part acid, part salt, part quiet, part lion. I am broke and I am awake. I am green, I am chartreuse.  I am full of truth. I am unlawful, self-righteous. I am aloof.  I am unencumbered, outnumbered and I am childless. I am full of lies. I am thunder. I am panther. I move swiftly in the dark. I am dark. I am speech. I am description. I am hollow, fluffy, silk and smoke-free. I am away. I am remembered. I am thought—a time of day. I am erupting. I am ruthful. I am a pear tree bearing plums. I am a fountain, a trickle, a bone, a white key, a black key, a coin. I am a canoe, a lighthouse, a totem. I am crystalline. I am a reflection. I am a knapsack, a puddle, an emblem, a bang.  I am a pair, a leaflet, a couplet, a rendering. I am a stair, a pedestal, a pendulum, a portal. I am out. I am land. I am a cell. I am a sail, an insignia, an island, a tide. I am voluntary, inevitable, indiscriminate, enveloped, unchained. 

When I See Felix in Exile I Know

There will always be outer space
and Negative Capability
In which I saw the depth of time and no time and the spaces
within a spilled espresso pot
and the contagious void that it creates
on white celluloid
That paper could pretend to be
a procession of encumbered dancers and laborers
of dark limbs
of any stature and without nations
A superimposition of white ants
traverse a single planet's path
across the liquid composition
whose common name is god
whose scientific
name has yet to be deduced
One could wield political power by symbols
cut and paste to fashion a custom flag
Indicating
There's less difference
between reading Russian and reorganizing a rubik's cube
than there is variation between the Brothers Karamazov
and amongst the constitution
of one cube to another at any point
in metamorphosis
No limitations to the use of rocket ships
Some enjoy them as large drinking vessels
while others prefer them for entertaining
interplanetary cousins
all aspiring to acquire the speech patterns of Carl Sagan
and Carl Jung
It takes little effort

but is of great consequence
to be a man with several folds

about his face and sculptings
to be a pearl in anything

other than an oyster
to leave everything broken

Trees are livestock - traduccion

a river arrives

 behind the barbed wire & each window

her loins root red in deep clay

 hillsides burst 

 bags of all-purpose flour

and the yellowing day finally collapses

while the ceiling asks & the bed answers

"you will never get there"

the cows are slow

and below the shadows of their hats

brims a diversion

lifting one palm

as if to say, "you're welcome"

we always pass 

leaving the beaches, 

the clouded space, the unnamed towns

ahead

like the cow

i don't have a country to go to

there is no table for us

to drink honey 

like this moment

without a watch

Loma Real

The livestock are naked Indians 
and have yellow bark.
A rio arrives at her loins that root deep
swallowed by red clay
dusted with windblown talcum 
from a washed out mountain.
El día amarillo collapses mientras que 
el cielo asks
and the bed answers,
"You'll never get there."
Las vacas son despacias.


Abajo de la sombra de sus sombreros, brims
a diversion--estan levantando una mano
as if to say, "You're welcome"
con mucho gusto.


Siempre pasamos adelante
adelante salgamos las playas, las lomas,
y los rincones nubosos.


Como la vaca, no tengo un pais para ir
no haya mesa donde podemos tomar miel
como este momento sin reloj.

So little that counts can actually be said.

"We are like two old people
sitting in rickety chairs
on the porch
sipping small glasses of beer,"
he says.

The monkeys drop bits of tree from the treetops
interrupting the insects' nocturnal chatter.

Yes, we are as old as we will ever be;
like this,
in the cooling of the day.
In the translation of a single burning star
into a perforated black nylon ceiling
where everything turns clockwise
so many times and so quickly that it appears to be
in the very same place.

We are not thirsty. And I trace the orbit of flocks above
while he plans for the sake of planning.

We are quiet together. Digesting.
When he closes his eyes, I hear him listening
to the crickets
immune to clichés and restless motors in the distance.